


The Dark King

by acollectionofdaydreams



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Everyone Is Alive, Fillory (The Magicians), Fix-It, Getting Together, Grieving, M/M, Mentions of Q's death, Panic Attacks, Post-Canon, Quentin is alive, Reunion, alternate season 5, canon compliant through 4x13
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-02-28 04:11:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 46,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18748768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acollectionofdaydreams/pseuds/acollectionofdaydreams
Summary: Margo and Eliot find themselves 300 years in the future with a Dark King ruling Fillory. Only that Dark King is someone they know. Meanwhile there's an underground Library rebellion, and something is seriously wrong with time itself. All of the threads pull together into what became my hot take on how season 5 should go.





	1. Chapter 1

Eliot honestly didn’t give a shit about Fillory, all things considered. He did give a shit about Margo though, and that was pretty much the only thing keeping him going. It had been a long two weeks since Eliot woke up in the hospital fully in possession of his own body. He only remembered hazy bits and pieces from the forest when Margo had axed the monster out of him. He wished it was clearer though because unlike when he’d woken up in the hospital, Quentin had been there. Eliot hadn’t gotten the chance to speak to him, considering he was too weak with pain to even lift his head, but he could see Quentin standing above him performing the cooperative spell with Penny. Eliot had shut his eyes, counting on a full reunion later on if he lived to see it. Now he wished he would have said something to him, anything.

They had held the memorial as soon as Eliot was strong enough to walk with a cane. They had no body to bury, so they were tossing their memories of Quentin into a bonfire. Margo brought him a peach after Eliot broke down in his hospital bed and told her the whole complicated affair from the key quest on. Eliot felt numb throughout the whole thing. If it hadn’t been for Kady’s spell causing them all to sing, he probably wouldn’t have said anything at all. After the memorial was over and everyone had quietly gone back to Kady’s apartment, he finally got his wish and was left alone.

Margo tried to check on him frequently and had slept in his bed with him on that first night curled up against his side. She brought him a plate of food at each meal time, but he didn’t see the point in eating it. What was the point of doing anything? The only thing he wanted was to lay in his bed in that too fancy apartment and never wake up. He wasn’t naive enough to think anyone was listening, but he prayed every night for it to just be over. It never was though, and each morning the loss hit him all over again when he woke up and reached out to an empty spot next to him where he’d somehow expected Quentin’s warm, sleep soft body to be.

That was something no one ever told you about grief. It took your subconscious mind awhile to catch up, so you had a tendency to forget everything in your dreams. Waking up and remembering the painful reality was like hearing the news for the first time over and over again. He honestly didn’t know how many more times his heart could break and keep on beating.

After five days of this, Margo opened his door roughly one morning. Or maybe it was afternoon, he wasn’t really sure. Eliot buried his head under the covers, but he could hear her heels clicking angrily across the hardwood floor. Suddenly the room was flooded with bright light as she pulled the curtains back. 

“Wake the fuck up, El,” she demanded.

“I’m awake,” he grumbled, “too bright.”

She walked quickly over to his bed and yanked the covers out of his hands. If he’d been eating and exercising like Professor Lipson told him to, he might have been strong enough to maintain his grip on the sheets. Instead he found himself curling up in a ball to shield his eyes from the sunlight streaming in. 

“Nuh-uh,” Margo said, “You’re going to get up and get dressed, and we’re going to have lunch downstairs in 15 minutes. You hear me, El? I will drag you out of this bed myself if I have to.”

He knew after years of experience when it was time to stop testing Margo’s patience, and he could hear the edge in her voice telling him he had reached that point. He also knew her well enough to know she wasn’t angry at him. She was afraid. He may not have cared much about his own life at that moment, but he did care about Margo. Knowing he put that fear in her voice was enough to make him listen.

“Okay, Bambi,” he replied, his voice cracking. He really should have been drinking more water. “I’ll be down in fifteen.”

He unfurled himself and looked at her, seeing the relief in the slump of her shoulders. She’d clearly expected more of a fight.

“Okay,” she said.

She strolled past his bed and stopped in the doorway, giving him another look. He met her eyes, and he cowered a bit under the intensity he saw there. Margo was hurting too, and he could feel it in her gaze. She nodded her head curtly and turned away towards the stairs.

When he finally got dressed in a pair of black trousers and a dark red button up, he slowly made his way down to the living area. It occurred to him that he really wasn’t very familiar with the rest of the apartment outside his bedroom. He had pretty much stayed there since he got released from the hospital with the occasional trips to the bathroom or downstairs to stare blankly into the open fridge when everyone else was asleep. He was existing solely on midnight snacks at this point. 

As soon as he entered, the room fell silent. He was met with the concerned and surprised stares of Julia, Kady, and Penny. Margo didn’t look his way. She was busying herself with making what appeared to be a grilled chicken salad in the kitchen.

“Hi,” he said, giving a half-hearted wave to the room. 

There was a beat of silence before Julia scooted over on the sofa and patted the spot next to her.

“Come here,” she said, “we were just talking about Kady’s plan to set up a new hedge safehouse, and we could use your input.”

He was absolutely sure they did not need his input, considering the only thing he’d ever done for the hedges was compare them to drug dealers and prostitutes. When he looked at Julia though, his excuses died in his throat. She was physically functioning a lot better than him considering her own possession, but he could see the truth simmering under the surface. She was Quentin’s best friend, and some part of him felt like maybe he owed it to him to play nice. So he nodded gently and pushed against his cane to walk over to her. Once he sat down, she shot him a hollow smile. It was like seeing his own grief reflected back at him, and it was almost too much. She took his hand in her smaller one and squeezed tightly, and he squeezed back.

“I’m really glad you’re okay, Eliot,” she said quietly.

He nodded, “You too.”

He settled into the couch and silently watched as Kady and Penny bickered over locations and wards and portals. He didn’t feel like he had anything to offer, but Julia was a grounding presence next to him. Margo brought him a salad bowl and a glass of water, which he grimaced at.

“Don’t get used to me waiting on you hand and foot,” she warned, “this is temporary until I can trust you won’t pull out a stitch or something.”

She sat down in the yellow chair across from him and stared him down as he picked at the bits of grilled chicken. It felt patronizing the way Margo was treating him like a child who needed to be fed and looked after, but he didn’t have it in him to complain. If he were in charge of his own choices, he’d still be upstairs in bed after all. Bossing him around was Margo’s way of loving him, and he was trying to love her back by not putting up a fight about it.

Kady left after lunch to meet up with Alice, who was apparently sort of running things at the Library now. That was news to Eliot, but he hadn’t exactly bothered to pay attention to what she did after the memorial service. He knew it was wrong of him, but he resented her a little bit. She had gotten back together with Quentin for a whole 24 hours, and suddenly she was given the grieving widow status. Eliot couldn’t help but feel like the mistress who had to hide his pain in the shadows. No one other than Margo even knew about the life he and Quentin had lived together or the battle he’d been fighting to get back and beg Quentin for a second chance. He wasn’t being fair to Alice because she loved Quentin too in her own way, but he was selfishly glad to find she’d left while he was moping. He didn’t know if he had it in him to face her yet.

Things were tense between Penny and Julia for reasons that Eliot hadn’t bothered to find out. He’d gathered that they had become a thing while he was gone. Julia wasn’t quite avoiding him, but she also wasn’t exactly warming to his sad puppy dog eyes as he followed her around the apartment while she loaded the dishwasher. Whatever it was, they’d figure it out. _At least they were both alive to do so_ , a bitter voice in his head reminded him.

Margo was tapping away at her phone while Eliot stared out the window. He really had to ask someone how they’d managed to get such a swanky apartment at some point because from what he could tell, they weren’t exactly in the suburbs. His thoughts were interrupted when Margo sat down her phone and cleared her throat. He looked her way expectantly.

“So, I’m not sure how much you were listening when I explained the whole Fen taking my crown situation, but I’m thinking I need to get back to Fillory and make sure she and Josh haven’t declared war or anything in my absence,” she said slowly, gauging his reaction.

“Fen and Josh would make an interesting royal pair,” he mused.

“I’m not sure if interesting is the word I’d use, but yeah,” she agreed, smiling at him.

They were silent for a minute. Margo sighed and leaned forward to place a hand on Eliot’s knee. He looked down at her perfectly manicured nails and wondered when she’d found the time to have them done.

“I can’t make you come with me,” she said softly, “but I don’t want to go back without you.”

He considered her words. Part of him definitely wasn’t up for whatever disaster was sure to find them in Fillory. The quirky little planet generally had zero chill as a rule. He barely knew how make it through the next hour, much less travel to another universe. What was here for him though? Of the people living in this apartment, he wasn’t exactly close to any of them. Then there was the closed door at the end of the hallway. All of Quentin’s things were behind that door. Eliot had walked into the room that first night and cried as soon as he saw Quentin’s old beat up tennis shoes on the floor. Eliot had been trying to get him to throw them away once upon a time, but here they were stubborn as ever. It was too much. He hadn’t even been conscious while Quentin lived here, but he still saw him everywhere. The only thing in this apartment left for Eliot was echoes of him and worried stares. He knew he couldn’t bear it on his own.

“I’ll go,” he said.

Margo exhaled and squeezed his knee.

“Thank you,” she said.

All things considered, he didn’t really give a shit about the state of his former kingdom when he found himself walking through the dense forest with Margo’s arm looped through his. It was nice to not be in that suffocating apartment though. It was probably the opium in the air, but he felt a little lighter. He was still leaning on the cane, but he wasn’t relying on it as much as he had been. The terrain was rocky though so he held onto it. They meandered through the worn path while Margo rambled on about how to get herself unbanished.

“Then I’m gonna find my man for some white hot grief banging,” she laughed to herself.

Eliot felt a tightness in his chest, and Margo pulled them to a stop.

“I’m sorry, that came out way harsher than I thought,” she said, giving him a horrified look. 

He took a slow step forward, dragging her along with him.

He shrugged, “It’s okay. It’s going to be weird for a while, so we’re just gonna have to...”

His sentence trailed off as they reached the clearing where they should be able to see Castle Whitespire gleaming in the distance. What they saw was absolutely not their Castle Whitespire though. It had tons of new glistening spires and looked almost futuristic, if anything in this medieval universe could. 

“Margo.”

She took a step forward and followed his horrified gaze.

“The fuck did they do to my castle?” Margo yelled.

Eliot heard footsteps approaching and looked to his left. A group of people with a wheelbarrow full of pumpkins were headed towards them on the dirt path.

“Uh, pardon me sir, crazy question but Fillory is still ruled by acting High King Fen, right?” he asked.

“If this is some kind of loyalty test,” the man in front answered accusingly.

“Uh, no no, uh we’ve just been away for awhile,” Eliot said, trying for nonchalance. 

“The Dark King reigns. Glory to his rule,” the man recited. “High King Fen and Josh the Fresh Prince were overthrown 300 years ago. May the gods curse them both. Have a good day.”

With that, the man picked up his wheelbarrow and led the group past them, leaving them in stunned silence. Eliot turned to Margo, and she gave him a wide-eyed stare.

“What the fuck now, El?” she asked.

Eliot looked back at the castle in the distance and steeled himself. Fucking Fillory, it was always something. He was going to have to shove his emotions way down before he could even come close to handling this. He closed his eyes and took one slow breath in then out. When he opened them, Margo was still staring at him.

“We need to get out of here for starters,” he said.

“And go where?” she asked frantically, “We’re 300 years in the future!”

Eliot thought for a moment then turned to her.

“Time was always a little bit off between Fillory and Earth, but our messenger bunnies always found everyone there when we needed them to, right?” he asked.

Nodding, she said, “So we need to find a bunny and tell 23 to come get us the fuck out of here before this Dark King or whoever the fuck finds out we’re here.”

“You go that way,” he pointed the way they’d come and then gestured ahead of the path, “and I’ll go this way. Yell if you find one.”

Margo nodded and they searched the woods for what could have been an hour before he heard Margo yell, “Got one!”

He started in the direction of her voice, but she came running around the corner before he got very far. She was holding the irritated looking bunny up in the air like a trophy. 

“Okay, here goes nothing,” she said.

She leaned down and whispered into the bunny’s ear and then it was gone. They stood there for a few moments. Only the sound of the wind rustling the leaves around them broke through their silent anticipation. Then suddenly Penny appeared in front of them.

“Oh, thank fuck,” Eliot exhaled.

“I’m not an Uber,” he grumbled as he landed with a thump. 

Margo grabbed his arm so tightly he yelped.

“We need to get to the Neitherlands,” she said, “Right now.”

Penny looked at her then at Eliot. “I don’t understand,” he said.

“We’ll explain when we get there,” Eliot said, “but we really need to get out of here. Now.”

Penny stared at his face for a moment then nodded. He grabbed both of their wrists and then in a flash they were standing in front of the Fillory fountain.

“Okay, now what the fuck is going on?” Penny asked.

“Somehow we landed 300 years in the future in Fillory,” Margo explained, “and some Dark King has gone all HGTV on my castle.”

“Well, that sounds… weird,” Penny said.

“You think?” Margo asked. “Now I know Josh had a bunker here in the Neitherlands when he got stranded by the Beast. If they made it out of Fillory alive, that’s where he and Fen will be. Assuming we’re not here in the year 3000 or something.”

“No, it should be present day,” Penny said, “or at least close to it.”

“Thank you, Penny,” Eliot said. “We should be able to take it from here.”

“You’re welcome, man,” he nodded. 

In a blink, he was gone. Eliot turned back to Margo and shrugged.

“Let’s hope there aren’t still cannibals here,” he said airily.

They moved forward carefully, hiding in the shadows every time they made it through another fountain. Everything was quiet though. Eerily quiet. Josh’s bunker hadn’t been far from the Fillory fountain if memory served, and they made it through the maze as quickly as they could with Eliot’s slower pace. Finally Margo grabbed Eliot’s wrist and pointed to what looked like a cellar door camouflaged into the ground. Eliot had admittedly not been remotely sober the first time they’d come here, so he was glad for Margo’s sharp memory. She walked up to the door and knocked twice, paused, then knocked three more times. She looked back at Eliot and pressed her lips into a hard line. There was silence for a beat then the door creaked open and Josh stuck his head out.

“Oh my god, you’re here!” Margo exclaimed.

“Shh, get in here, quick,” he directed and moved out of the way so they could follow him inside. 

As soon as they got through the door, Margo flew into Josh’s arms. 

“I thought you were dead,” she said, squeezing him tightly. 

Eliot walked past them and towards the center of the room when he saw movement around the corner. He looked up and got just a glimpse of her blonde hair before she rushed towards him.

“Eliot!” Fen exclaimed.

She flung her arms around his waist and buried her face in his chest. He lifted his free arm up to her back and did his best to give a one-handed hug. She stepped away from him slowly and looked up at him, her smile faltering.

“Wow, am I glad to see you,” she said quickly, “I mean, I thought. Well, you’re here now. How are you?”

He couldn’t help but grin at her. They hadn’t exactly been on the greatest of terms after the fairy miscarriage and subsequent invasion before Eliot had gotten possessed, but she was family. According to Margo, she had really come a long way while he was gone. 

“I’ve been worse,” he replied, “but the better question is, what the fuck happened while we were gone?”

Margo and Josh stepped into the room to join them. Josh gestured to the chairs along the wall.

“Uh, you might want to sit down because this story gets complicated,” he said.

They all gathered in a circle around the table where the psychedelic carrots had sat on their first visit here. Eliot had been grieving then too. It was only by some miracle he hadn’t overdosed in a dark alley back then. The circumstances weren’t really all that different now, but they somehow were. He hadn’t wanted to self-medicate this time around. Some masochistic part of him wanted to feel the pain, the loss. Maybe he’d just learned from Mike that no amount of booze or pills would make any difference. Sweet, dumb, self-sacrificing Quentin was gone, and Eliot couldn’t drink him back. Some older and wiser part of him knew that Quentin wouldn’t want that for him anyway and he felt obligated to honor him in that way at least. 

Margo cleared her throat from where she sat to his left, dragging his attention back to the shitshow unfolding in the present.

“Okay, so to begin, what’s up with the timey wimey?” she asked, “Because some dickhead in Fillory told us it had been 300 years since you two were overthrown.”

Fen’s eyes went wide, and she looked at Josh.

“How..?” she trailed.

“Uh, it was only six months ago for us,” Josh replied warily. He continued, “That is, six months in Fillory and about two days here.”

Eliot pressed the palm of his hand into his eyes until he saw stars then groaned, “Okay, let’s get this straight. Time on Earth passes more quickly than it does here and slower than it does in Fillory, normally.”

Josh nodded, “But it must be speeding up in Fillory at an exponential rate if-”

Margo cut him off, “Okay, next question because my head is seriously starting to hurt. How long were we gone before this Dark King showed up? And why didn’t you think to, I don’t know, call us?”

“You were gone for ten years before he showed up,” Fen explained. “We tried to reach you but none of our bunnies were getting through. After awhile, we assumed something went wrong with the monsters on Earth when no one answered.”

She looked at them sadly. That would explain why she had acted like she’d seen a ghost when they walked in.

“How long has it been for you guys since the monsters?” she asked.

“About two weeks,” Eliot answered.

“Oh wow,” she said.

“So, time is fucked,” Josh surmised. 

“Looks like it,” Margo agreed, “Now lay it on me, who is this Dark King and how did you two get overthrown by him?”

Eliot pulled his eyebrows together as a thought occurred to him.

“And how is he still alive if it’s been 300 years in Fillory?” he asked.

Josh sighed and shrugged, “I’m kind of wondering that myself.”

Fen cleared her throat, “I don’t know what has or hasn’t happened on Earth since it was only two weeks for you, but was Quentin..?”

She moved her head back and forth as her question trailed off. Eliot’s head shot up, and Margo cut her eyes at him worriedly. She grabbed his hand between their chairs and held on.

“Fen, honey, I thought you guys knew. There was a complication in the mirror world,” she explained carefully, “Quentin... he didn’t make it.”

Josh shook his head, “Uh, that’s not possible.”

Eliot’s heart raced in his chest. He felt like he was going to be sick. Margo tightened her grip on his hand until it almost hurt, but he hardly cared. He felt like he was about to lose his mind, and he needed her to hold on to.

“And why is that?” Margo asked.

Fen and Josh exchanged a worried glance, and then Josh spoke.

“I don’t know how to say this, so I’m just going to say it. Quentin is the Dark King.”


	2. Chapter 2

Eliot felt like the ground had dropped out from underneath him. He couldn’t breathe, and he somehow had ended up on the concrete floor. He tried to focus on something to ground him, but everything was spinning in a confusing way that made his head hurt and his eyes squeeze shut.

“Oh shit!” Josh exclaimed.

“Get him some water!” Margo shouted.

He turned his head in the direction of her voice, and reached out until he felt her small hand grasp his arm. He shut his eyes again.

“Breathe, El,” she instructed.

He realized then that he was hyperventilating. He sucked in a deep breath and held it for a few seconds before letting it out and continued to do this until he felt like the room had stopped moving. It had been a long while since he’d had a panic attack this severe, but it wasn’t an entirely new experience for him.

“Can you look at me, Eliot?” Margo asked.

He nodded his head and opened his eyes. Margo was crouched down in front of him. She looked just as panic-stricken as he felt. Fen rushed to her side with a glass of water, which Margo took and handed to Eliot. He accepted it and took slow sips until he had finished the glass. Margo took it from him and set it to the side.

“Okay, do you think you can get up or do you want to stay down here?” Margo asked him kindly.

“Up,” Eliot answered.

“Okay, let’s go then,” Margo agreed.

She and Fen each took an arm and lifted him until he was somewhat standing. They slowly guided him into the chair he wasn’t sure how he actually fell out of. He gripped the sides of it and shut his eyes, counting to ten. When his head had stopped spinning, he realized there were tears on his face. He reached up and wiped one away.

 _Quentin is the Dark King._

Josh's words echoed in his head, but he knew there must be some misunderstanding. Quentin was dead. His body had been consumed by magic in the mirror world after he sacrificed himself to keep Everett from becoming a god. Alice and Penny had watched it happen. That was the truth. They’d had a funeral. It had been two weeks. Quentin was gone.

Margo and Fen took their seats on either side of him, and Josh stared at the table blankly while Eliot’s mind spun out of control. 

“I think Eliot and I have a few questions, to say the least,” Margo ventured, “keeping in mind that we just had Quentin’s funeral less than a week ago and things are still a little raw.”

Josh leaned forward and looked at Eliot.

“We had no idea, man,” he said, “I’m sorry to just spring this on you guys like that.”

Eliot swallowed. “It’s okay,” he said, “Just please, explain.”

Josh nodded his head and hesitantly said, “Okay, right, so like we said, ten years had passed. We tried forever to reach any of you guys but no one picked up. After awhile, there was a drought and then an uprising in the Outer Islands, and we just had shit to do so we moved on. Then one day out of nowhere, a bunch of people burst through the doors of the throne room while we were holding court and there he was.”

“Quentin, you mean?” Margo asked.

“Yes,” Fen answered. “He was different though. It was really strange. He said they were taking the castle, and we were thrown into the dungeons before we even knew what was happening.”

Eliot was frankly just trying to suspend his disbelief long enough to keep up at this point, so he asked, “And this was six months ago for you, correct?”

“Yep,” Josh nodded. “Things had been sort of rocky for awhile there, so luckily I’d kept a set of palace keys on me in case of violent uprising.”

“Smart,” Margo nodded approvingly.

“Right? I thought so,” Josh agreed. “Anyway, we snuck out of the dungeons one night then went on an extended camping trip where we found The White Lady and made her send us here. We would have gone to Earth, but we kind of thought you all were dead.”

Josh shrugged apologetically. Eliot stood up then and grabbed his cane, making Margo and Fen reach out for him worriedly. His commitment to sobriety had been noble, but he thought this was probably considered an extenuating circumstance.

“I need a drink,” he said, “so please tell me you have something alcoholic in this bunker.”

“Beer’s in the fridge,” Josh offered.

Eliot wrinkled his nose instinctually at the mention of beer but then sighed, resigning himself. 

“Fine, desperate times call for desperate measures.”

He hobbled into the kitchen and pulled a beer out of the dingy old refrigerator. God knows how long it had been there, and he could only assume it was running on magic alone at this point. He leaned back against the counter and popped open the top of the bottle. The beer burned as it went down his throat, and he didn’t particularly enjoy the flavor. He would need at least three more of these before he could stop caring what he was drinking. He did a quick enchantment on the bottle with a flick of his wrist that assured it would never run out. Might as well make do. He tipped the bottle back up and winced as he took another gulp, but Margo appeared at his side and grabbed it out of his hands before he could get too far.

“We need to talk,” she said in a serious tone.

He cocked his head to the side and nodded.

“Yeah, I’d say so,” he agreed.

She shifted from one foot to another and bit her lip. He stared down at her, focusing on remembering to breathe in and out. 

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said, leveling him with a hard glare.

“Really?” he asked incredulously, “Because I don’t.”

“Oh come on, Eliot,” she said, “You think that’s really Quentin in the castle and that we can somehow save him.”

Eliot rubbed a hand down his face and sighed.

“Honestly, I don’t know what to think, Bambi,” he admitted, “I mean, Quentin died. Alice and Penny saw it.”

“I know,” Margo said, “which is why I don’t think we should trust that whoever this joker is might actually be him. Shit is fucked in Fillory right now, and there’s the matter of why on earth Q would overthrow Fen and Josh in the first place if it really was him.”

Eliot nodded along as she spoke. Everything she said was a good point, and he didn’t know any of the answers to her questions. They would be stupid to assume it could be so simple that Quentin was hiding out in Fillory while they were on Earth grieving him. Then there was the tiny matter of 300 years passing. But despite all of that, there was some tiny long-forgotten hope ignited deep in Eliot’s chest when he heard Quentin’s name. He knew he needed to squash it out because hope never led anywhere good for them, but...

“Margo, I don’t know what’s going on, but if there’s even a tiny chance that that’s Q,” he said, his voice wavering.

She sighed and looked up at him, and he saw the wetness there in her eyes too.

“Yeah, I know,” she said.

A week passed in the bunker without much in the way of a plan, and everyone was growing restless. There was no going outside, because Josh had explained that the Library had cleaned out the Neitherlands. They'd had a close call with one of their lackeys when they escaped. That would explain the lack of the usual mercenaries wandering about, but it didn’t explain why exactly the library had taken the initiative in the first place.

Margo said they needed to get back to Earth and enlist some reinforcements. Assuming time was somewhat stable between Earth and the Neitherlands, it had probably been a few months for them since Penny had dropped them off. Josh argued that it was too dangerous to just go outside without a plan. Whatever the Library was doing with wanderers in the Neitherlands, they didn’t want to be caught up in it. Fen fell somewhere in the middle, and Eliot was drinking. 

Margo didn’t even try to hide her disappointment, but she left Eliot alone about it. He hadn't been able to focus on much of anything since he heard Quentin's name. If it really was him, they had a whole host of other problems to contend with. He’d somehow gotten from the mirror world to Fillory without a body and then managed to become immortal. And he was apparently evil? That was around the point Eliot usually started drinking heavily. None of it made sense. He had been mourning Quentin, but how could he mourn someone who maybe wasn’t even gone after all? It left him stuck in the middle somewhere with no relief either way.

Fen approached him as he sat on one of the old cots in the back of the bunker one night. 

“Can I sit with you?” she asked.

He nodded and scooted over. She smiled gratefully and squeezed next to him on the small space. It wasn’t exactly the Hilton, and sharing such close quarters with Margo and Josh had gotten old really fast. Fen seemed to think the same thing if the looks she had been shooting him were any indication. Eliot wasn’t really sure how he felt about them as a couple yet, but the sight of them together tore at some wound deep inside him. It wasn’t fair, but he wasn’t ready to be around that kind of happiness. Not when he felt like his heart was gone.

“How are you holding up?” she asked cautiously.

He shrugged and took a drink.

“Yeah, that was a stupid question,” she admitted, looking down at her feet.

They sat in silence for a few moments before Fen cleared her throat and turned to Eliot.

“I didn’t know about you and Quentin,” she said, “I mean, I knew you were close, but..”

Eliot cut her off, “You don’t have to do that.”

To Eliot’s surprise, Fen looked offended.

“Do what, Eliot?” she asked. “I know we’re technically married, or maybe we’re not anymore after Ember banished you, I don’t know, but I’m not going to get my feelings hurt. Things were never like that for us, and that’s okay. We were friends though. At least I thought we were.”

Guilt cut through him. He had a habit of underestimating Fen, and it was time for that to stop. She had never once been just the girl who was raised to marry the king, and that was clear now. 

“We are friends. And I’m sorry,” he said, swallowing around the uncomfortable lump in his throat.

She smiled sadly and leaned her head against his shoulder. He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her to him. 

“No one really knew about me and Quentin,” he admitted quietly. 

She waited for him to go on, listening but not pushing.

“There wasn’t anything to know about because I ended it before it could start. And now..” he trailed.

He felt her nod against him. There were really no words to describe now. He sat up to face her and asked what had been circling his brain since the start.

“Are you sure it was really him, Fen?” he asked. “I mean, Margo isn’t convinced, but I need to know.”

She looked at him seriously for a moment then nodded.

“Yeah, it was him,” she said.

Eliot felt it like a punch to his gut.

“Like I said, he was different though. It was unnerving. He knew who we were, but it was like he didn’t care?” she tried to explain.

“Do you think it could have been him from another timeline?” Eliot considered, thinking aloud more than anything.

“No, it was our Quentin,” she insisted, “Josh said he had cut his hair when Fogg did that whole memory wipe thing on everyone, and it was the same hairstyle he’d had when Josh saw him last on Earth.”

Eliot filed Quentin cutting his hair away under the list of things he would think about later when he had less pressing issues. That was interesting, but certainly not what he was meant to be focusing on here. Not that he had any idea what he was meant to focus on.

“I think Margo may be right. We’re in over our heads here,” he admitted.

“Yeah, but how are we going to make it to the Earth fountain?” she asked. 

Despite Josh’s concerns, he was outvoted and that question became the number one priority as the group sat around the table the next day and threw around ideas. 

“Alice works for the Library,” Margo pointed out. 

“Yeah, but how are we going to reach her?” Josh asked, “And how likely is it that she’s involved in whatever is going on here?”

They needed to get to Earth to bring Alice into the fold, which brought them back to how to get to Earth.

“How sure are you that anyone is even watching this place? When we came through it was a ghost town,” Eliot said.

“How sure are you that you want to take that risk?” Josh challenged.

Margo slammed her hands down on the table, and everyone jumped. 

“That’s enough! We don’t have time for this,” she said, her voice raised. “Fen has a knife, I’ve got Sorrow and Sorrow, and we’re just going to have to go for it.”

“I agree,” Eliot said quickly, not looking up from the hole he was staring in the table.

Fen looked between Margo and Josh before nodding her head. 

“I’m in too,” she said glancing at Eliot, “this could be our only shot, and we can't just stay here forever.”

Josh threw his hands in the air in defeat and sighed.

“Fine, I don’t really see what other option we have.”

They spent the rest of the morning gathering what little they had in the way of supplies and generally not talking about what their next step was going to be. If Eliot was going to retain his sanity, he couldn’t think any further than getting to the Earth fountain. If he thought about everything else, he’d be no use to any of them or Quentin. If there even was a Quentin. 

When they ventured out of the bunker, it was Margo taking the lead with Fen following behind Josh and Eliot, knife in hand. There was definitely some humor to be found in the two smallest people being their bodyguards, but Eliot and Josh were decidedly not allowed to touch anything sharp. Eliot frankly pitied anything that came face to face with Margo and her axes. 

True to Eliot’s assertion, there was no one to be seen once they made it out of the woods and into the clearings with the fountains. 

“Not to say I told you so, but,” he started, and Margo shushed him. He laughed under his breath as Josh rolled his eyes.

Thankfully, Eliot was healing quite well by this point and the cane was more of a formality than a necessity. With that luxury, they moved a little more quickly than he and Margo had. Eliot had mused that the cane was his secret weapon, but no one had bothered to agree with him on that one. It didn’t seem very necessary anyway. They made it all the way to the Earth fountain without incident, but Margo stopped in her tracks and motioned them all behind a bush when they got to the edge of the opening. 

“What’s going on?” Fen asked, unable to see from where she had been walking backwards at the rear.

“Shut up!” Margo hissed, “We’ve got company!”

They all fell silent and watched as the man and woman Margo had spotted paced diagonal to them across the fountain. They were definitely from the Library with their grey suits and business casual appearance. The woman had her hair in a tight updo and a stern look on her face. The pair walked towards the opening where they were standing, and they all pushed back as tightly as they could into the bush. Eliot could just barely make out their hushed voices with them this close.

“Whoever made it out of the Fillory fountain probably got picked off by stragglers by now,” the man said, sounding bored.

“Maybe,” the woman nodded, “but we can’t assume.”

“Hm,” the man replied, not quite sounding like he agreed.

They stood silently as Eliot tried not to breathe. Suddenly there was a low vibrating noise, and the woman pulled out a cell phone. Eliot figured now wasn’t the best time to wonder how she had reception in the Neitherlands. Probably some sort of secret Library network.

She turned her screen to the man next to her, and he nodded. She leaned in close to his ear and said just loudly enough for them to hear, “Glory to his rule.”

“Glory to his rule,” the man replied. 

With that, the woman stalked off in the opposite direction and left the man alone at the fountain. They waited a few seconds until they were sure she was gone, then Margo looked back at them and nodded.

“Go time,” she whispered.

In a flash of movement, Margo jumped on the man’s back and crossed her axes over his neck. Fen rushed to the front and stuck her knife inches from the man’s face. 

“Scream and I’ll kill you,” Margo hissed into his ear.

He nodded, staring straight ahead at Fen with wide eyes. Eliot circled around to stand behind her and crossed his arms.

“Why are you guarding the Earth fountain?” he asked.

The man squirmed, and Margo tightened the axes at his adam’s apple. 

“Answer him,” she said.

The man gulped and said, “Library’s orders. The new administration wanted less murder between worlds, so you need a permit to pass through now.”

That sounded like something Alice would implement, but it didn’t exactly fit with what they’d seen.

“So why only the Earth fountain then?” Fen asked.

The man didn’t answer, and Eliot took a step forward.

“And what did you say to that woman before she walked away?” he asked.

His face took on a wicked grin then. He spit on the ground, and looked up at Eliot under his dark lashes.

He growled, “Glory to his rule.”

Eliot had heard that before, hadn’t he? He shut his eyes, digging through fuzzy alcohol-infused memories, until it finally hit him.

“You mean the Dark King’s rule?” he asked.

The man started laughing then, getting louder until he became hysterical. He was shaking with it, and Eliot felt his blood boiling as his fists clenched.

“Alright, your time’s up,” Margo shouted.

In a swift coordinated movement, she pulled the axes sharply across his throat and jumped off of his back. The man dropped to the ground. There was blood spreading across the white concrete, and Eliot looked at Margo open-mouthed.

“Holy shit, Bambi,” he said.

Fen and Josh were giving her similar awestruck looks.

“It’s been a long year,” she shrugged, “Now let’s go.”

With a quick look around to see if there were any other Library guards, the four of them dove into the fountain. They landed right in the middle of the New York apartment, to the surprise of Kady and Julia. The two girls were on their feet in an instant with Kady’s hands already halfway to firing off some battle magic. 

She paused as Julia took a puzzled step forward to get a better look and asked, “Wait. Eliot? Margo? What are you guys doing here?”

Eliot sat up as best he could and looked between the two of them.

“Uh, we’ve got a bit of an all hands on deck situation,” he said.


	3. Chapter 3

Kady called Alice in from the Library, and the whole group sat around the living room in various states of shock while Josh and Fen recounted the story from Fillory to now. The news of Quentin’s reappearance hit pretty hard for everyone. Julia and Alice had started crying. Eliot held his jaw steady and stayed silent while Margo leaned firmly into his side. The most complicated part had been the whole Library business with Alice.

“I swear, I had no idea what was going on in the Neitherlands,” she insisted. “My idea was to get rid of all the crime between the fountains by setting up a permit system so we’d know who was passing through.”

“Well, the Library’s goons have started guarding the entrances instead,” Margo said.

Alice’s forehead wrinkled as she puzzled over the new information. She asked, “But why would they do that?” 

Eliot glanced at Julia, who was shaking her head.

“What doesn’t make sense here is Q,” she said, stating the obvious. “Say he is alive, then why would he be calling himself the Dark King of Fillory?”

“It was him, but he wasn’t acting like himself,” Fen said.

“He was cold,” Josh agreed. “I tried to reason with him, but he wouldn’t even make eye contact. He just told the guards to get rid of us.”

“Oh my god,” Julia said.

A realization seemed to hit Penny then as well, and their eyes met. 

“You don’t think,” he said.

Julia nodded.

“Maybe.”

“Holy fuck,” Josh added, jerking his head up to meet Julia’s eyes.

“Anyone wanna share with the class?” Margo asked, her voice dripping with impatience.

It took some catching up with the rest of the group to explain what had happened in timeline 23, but they all got there.

“So, that Quentin became the beast without his shade,” Julia explained. “He got obsessed with Fillory and said he finally understood Martin Chatwin. He killed Ember, took his power, and started wiping out Magicians who could be a threat to his control over Fillory. That could be what we’re dealing with, to some extent, if our Q has lost his shade.”

Alice had been looking very pale since the revelation of the Library’s involvement, but she was nodding along. She said, “Except that he can’t be alive though, not really. I got word from Zelda that our Penny had met with Quentin in the Underworld.”

Every head in the room jerked in her direction.

“You fucking what?” Margo interrupted. 

Julia and Kady looked shocked too, so Eliot assumed this wasn’t exactly common knowledge for anyone. Anger twisted in his stomach, and those feelings of resentment he’d had toward Alice hit him all over again. He felt Margo grab his wrist. It was a warning, but she was gripping so tightly that he had a feeling she wasn’t having the most warm and fuzzy thoughts right now either.

“Sorry, I wasn’t really supposed to tell you,” she said, having the decency to at least look guilty. Which was good, because Eliot felt like his glare alone could probably destroy her in that moment. She carried on, “But Q, he was supposed to have moved on to where he was meant to go in the Underworld already. If he wasn’t brought back and this is somehow in his afterlife, then that would explain how he’s been there for 300 years because he wouldn’t really be mortal.”

Eliot didn’t have the emotional capacity to process Quentin moving on, whatever that meant. One thing at time. So he interjected, “Okay, but that still begs the question of why he’s topside in Fillory? And how he lost his shade?”

“Maybe the better question is how deep this Library rebellion goes,” Josh added. “Seems like we’ve got a serious ‘Hail Hydra’ situation going on here.”

Everyone turned to look at him and he scoffed at them.

“Come on, Winter Soldier anyone?” he asked.

Realization dawned on Kady’s face, and she said, “Oh, shit.”

“You think someone in the Library is behind this,” Alice realized, sounding a little offended, “that someone in the Underworld sent Q to Fillory.”

“I’m saying it seems to be pretty connected with all the ‘glory to his rule’ talk,” Josh said.

“But Everett is dead,” Alice argued.

“The Library under Everett’s rule was a fascist power-hungry institution, Alice,” Kady said, “Killing a leader doesn’t kill an idea.”

Alice didn’t have a response. They all stared at the floor, shifting uncomfortably. Julia was the first to speak.

“I think it’s worth using your resources to find out,” she suggested. “It’s Q, Alice.”

Alice twisted her hands in her lap and nodded resolutely.

“You’re right,” she said, “I’ll look into it.”

“I’ll help,” Kady volunteered, and Alice smiled at her gratefully.

“Okay, so it’s settled then,” Margo said. “You two take the Library uprising, and the rest of us will figure out where the fuck Q’s shade is.”

“I think I can help with that,” Julia said. “Q and I were able to get to the part of the Underworld where they keep the separated shades once.”

“Perfect. Let’s go get his shade, then let’s go kick the fucker out of my castle,” Margo said sitting up. 

“Not to rain on anyone’s parade, but don’t you think we should make sure his shade is actually gone?” Penny asked. “What are we going to do if we get to the Underworld and his shade’s not there?”

The room fell silent after that. Penny was right, and they all knew it. Eliot didn’t know exactly how one got to the Underworld or to where the shades were kept, but he had a feeling it wasn’t an easy task. If that wasn’t the problem, then they’d practically be back to square one with whatever was wrong with Quentin and Fillory. Still, they had to try.

“So, crazy idea,” Eliot started, “but what if we grab Q from Fillory and bring him back here? Then we can be sure about his shade, and he’ll also be out of Fillory and whatever fuckery is going on there. We’ll have to get him out anyway if we’re going to get him back his shade.”

Alice’s head shot up, and Eliot could just tell this wasn’t going to end well judging by the look on her face.

Julia nodded. “That’s risky, but it’s probably the only way to find out for sure,” she said. “Penny could travel us in and out of the castle because we can’t get through the Neitherlands.”

“Wait, you aren’t thinking of trying to bring Q back to life are you?” Alice asked.

Margo’s eyes lit up like fire, and Eliot took great pleasure in doing nothing to stop what came next. She let go of his wrist and started walking towards Alice, who stood up to meet her.

“You bet your ass I am, and if you plan on stopping me then you better get the fuck out of the way,” Margo said, getting in her face.

“Guys,” Kady said, moving forward to get between them.

“You can’t just mess with life and death like that, Margo,” Alice argued, a desperate sounding tone in her voice. “If Q has moved on, then his book is finished. There’s nothing we can do but make sure he gets where he’s actually supposed to be.”

“Quentin brought you back once, didn’t he?” Julia countered.

“Who says I wanted him to?” Alice shot back angrily.

Eliot got up then and walked over to stand behind Margo. All eyes were on him as he used his full height to look down at Alice.

“Alice, with all due respect, none of the rest of us give a flying fuck about the Library’s precious books or your need to always fucking decide what’s best for everyone else.” She flinched as his voice raised, but he didn’t waver. He pulled his shoulders back, asserting the authority of a High King. 

“If Q has moved on, then he made his own choice already,” she argued.

She had a point, but it wasn’t one Eliot was going to give her. Quentin may have chosen to move on, but Eliot wasn’t going to accept that until Quentin looked him in the eyes and told him himself.

“He didn’t know he had a choice to make,” Eliot countered. You could hear a pin drop in the apartment. He let all the fury he felt fill his voice as he continued, “I’m with Bambi. If you try to stand in our way of getting Q back, then we will do whatever it takes to stop you and that is a promise.”

His tone was deadly serious. He let the threat hang in the air for a moment as he glanced around the room. His eyes met Julia’s, and she nodded at him. Margo placed her hands on her hips. Alice clenched and unclenched her fists nervously, looking around the room for support. Everyone remained quiet.

“So, all of you are on board then?” she asked. 

Kady said, “I’m sorry, Alice, but this is a bit bigger than the Library’s rules. Quentin’s already not staying dead like he was supposed to. If we can get his shade back and give him another chance, don’t you think he deserves that after all he sacrificed for us?”

Alice turned to Kady and asked, “Why are you trying to help Quentin when none of us helped save Penny?”

“Because it’s fucked up that we couldn’t save Penny, and we actually have a chance to do something right this time,” Kady replied.

“She’s right,” Penny said, “It was too late for Quentin in my timeline, but if we can get his shade back then this could be our second chance. At least it would keep him from being whatever he is now. I’ve seen him without his shade, and it didn’t exactly end well for anyone.”

“And if he doesn’t want to come back?” Alice asked.

“Then that’s his decision, not yours,” Margo replied evenly.

Alice countered, “How are you going to make him mortal again?”

“We’ll figure it out,” Eliot said.

Tension flooded the room while Alice considered. Finally she sighed and dropped her hands.

“Fine, I won’t stop you,” she said defeated, “but please be careful because you never know what might happen when you mess with things like this.”

“This is Quentin, Alice,” Eliot said, his voice softening just a touch. “We can’t afford to fuck it up.”

Alice left shortly after, saying she needed to go home and do some research on the Underworld branch. Kady went with her. Eliot was fairly sure there was something going on there, but he hadn’t exactly been paying either of them the most attention. He’d worry about who was fucking who when they had Quentin. Josh took Fen into the city at her request, and the remaining crew sat around several boxes of Chinese takeout that night as they tried to figure out their next steps.

“So, what’s the plan here?” Penny asked.

“We blip into the castle, grab Darth Quentin, and get out,” Margo said around a mouthful of chicken and rice.

Penny rolled his eyes.

“No shit,” he said, “but where am I taking him after that? We can’t just keep him here in the apartment. The dude’s probably out of his head. He could kill us all.”

Eliot had an idea.

“Brakebills,” he said, making everyone turn to him. “Dean Fogg has a sort of safe room at Brakebills. It’s a no magic zone.”

Eliot remembered when he’d confronted Mike there. It felt like another lifetime ago. 

“That’s actually not a bad idea,” Julia agreed, “We’re going to have to loop Dean Fogg in though.”

“I’ll handle Fogg,” Margo said with a brush of her hand. “I think he still owes us after handing all of magic to the Library.”

“Okay, so, who’s going to Fillory?” Penny asked. “I’m not traveling eight people and worrying about getting Quentin in lockdown before he kills anyone, so we’re going to need to narrow it down. Two people tops.”

Margo scoffed, “Not Alice, that’s for sure.”

Penny and Julia laughed under their breaths. It was probably the first time any of them had laughed that day at least. Eliot bit his lip before taking a deep breath and looking up.

“I’m going,” he said.

Julia looked in his direction quickly and nodded.

“Me too,” she said.

Margo interjected, “Hang on, this is my kingdom we’re talking about here.”

“Well, you’re technically still banished,” Eliot corrected her. “As far as Fillory is concerned, I died 300 years ago so I’m probably not exactly on their watch list.”

Margo rolled her eyes, “Fine, you have a point.”

“Okay then,” Julia said, clapping her hands together. “Eliot, Penny, and I will go to Fillory tomorrow and we’ll bring back Q.”

Later that evening, Eliot was sitting on the bed he’d previously claimed in Kady’s apartment while Margo paced back and forth across his lamp-lit room. 

“I don’t trust her, Eliot,” she muttered. 

Eliot wondered idly if Alice knew just how badly she had screwed up by pissing off Margo. He loved her dearly, but god was he glad she was on his side. Hell hath no fury like a Margo scorned, and he had a feeling she wasn’t going to let this go for a long while.

“Neither do I, but what choice do we have?” he asked. “She’s kind of our only in at the Library other than our Penny, and we have no idea how to reach him.”

“I know we don’t have a choice, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it,” Margo said. Anger was still rolling off of her in the tight set of her shoulders. “I swear I’ll cut her if she says one more goddamn word about Q moving on.”

Eliot didn’t doubt Margo actually would. 

“Maybe one of us should go with her and Kady to do recon at the Library,” he said, sitting up.

Margo stopped pacing and stared at Eliot. “Huh,” she said, “actually not a bad idea.”

“It’s just, this is Quentin,” he said, “and I don’t really feel comfortable leaving his life in the hands of the person who tried to destroy all magic forever.”

“Agreed,” Margo said. “The only people I trust to bring our boy back in one piece are the people in this room.”

Eliot smiled and opened his arms. Margo crawled into the bed and curled up at his side, resting her head against his chest. He placed his chin on top of her head and squeezed her to him.

“I knew you secretly liked him,” Eliot said smugly.

She smacked his arm and laughed.

“I guess the nerd grew on me, but if you tell him I said that they’ll never find your body.”

He smiled and said, “Your secret’s safe with me, Bambi.”

“So, I’ll take Library duty,” Margo said, “Unless you want to babysit Alice.”

“God, no,” Eliot replied, “That one’s all yours. I’m going with Julia and Penny to kidnap Fillory’s Dark King.”

Margo ran her fingers lightly back and forth over Eliot’s arm. She was quiet, and Eliot could practically hear her thinking. 

“Are you sure you’re up for it, El?” Margo finally asked, her voice soft.

“I’m practically healed,” he said dismissively.

Margo turned her head to look up at him, and Eliot swallowed around the lump in his throat.

“That’s not what I mean, and you know it,” she said accusingly, but there was no heat behind it.

He did know it. Was he up to seeing this version of Quentin? Even if it wasn’t the same Quentin, it was still going to be his face and eyes and floppy hair. It had barely been a month since Eliot had thrown a peach into the fire. Since he’d thought he’d never see Quentin again. It had been way longer than that since he’d exchanged more than a few rushed words with him.

“I don’t know,” he admitted quietly.

Margo reached up to kiss him on the cheek, and he closed his eyes. She brought her hand up to his face and caressed him gently with her thumb. He leaned into the touch.

“You don’t have to go,” she said, “Julia and Penny can handle this leg of the quest.”

“I know,” he said, “but I need to go. I just..”

He trailed off, and Margo snuggled back into his side with a sigh.

“I know,” she said, “just be careful.”

Eliot nodded and wrapped his arms around her tightly. He realized after a few minutes that she’d fallen asleep. He placed a light kiss on the top of her head and turned out the light. He adjusted them so that they were lying down with Margo’s head on his chest and stared up at the ceiling, resigning himself to a sleepless night.

The next morning was spent strategizing, which was not exactly an easy task with the eight of them. The phrase ‘ _too many chiefs and not enough indians_ ’ came to Eliot’s mind. It was a somewhat problematic phrase he realized, but that’s a formative childhood in the Midwest for you. He had used pretty much all of his confrontational energy the previous day and just wanted to do less talking and get to the saving Quentin part. Fen was staying out of the bickering as well. As an overthrown High King of Fillory, she was obviously sidelined in the Fillory mission. Eliot kind of figured she felt a little out of place with this crowd anyway, and he couldn’t blame her for not contributing much. The two of them found themselves tucked away in the kitchen when Kady and Margo started round three of Is Margo Coming to the Library or Not. 

“Is it always like this?” Fen asked.

Eliot shrugged.

“Usually we all have our own things going on, but Q always took the lead when it came to the quests and plans,” he said. 

“I can see why,” Fen said.

Eliot laughed and leaned forward onto the counter to bury his face in his hands. Quentin would have yelled for everyone to shut up and given them some direction by now. Eliot couldn’t even pretend to be that person in his absence. Eliot was the person who made the snarky comments and found a way to fuck up Quentin’s perfectly good plans. He remembered countless days spent working on the mosaic when Quentin had had enough of Eliot’s occasional uncooperative moods, but he had always fallen asleep in Eliot’s arms on those nights anyway. He felt an ache in his chest at that thought. Then there was Blackspire when Eliot had shot the monster against Quentin’s wishes and sort of started this whole mess.

“You really miss him a lot, don’t you?” Fen asked.

Eliot scrubbed his hands down his face and sighed. He had kind of forgotten she was there.

“You have no idea,” he said.

Fen said, “You know, I regret never getting the chance to get to know him.”

It hadn’t really occurred to Eliot how little time Quentin and Fen had spent together. They were both such a big part of his life that it felt strange that they were so disconnected. He thought Quentin would probably like her. 

“Maybe you’ll get to,” he said, “after all this.”

“I hope so,” she smiled.

Eliot heard footsteps approaching then, and he felt his shoulders tense when he saw Alice round the corner. She walked past them without making eye contact and went straight for the alcohol cabinet. Eliot couldn’t help the laugh that escaped under his breath.

“I thought I was the one with the alcohol problem around here,” he mumbled in her general direction.

Alice pulled out a bottle of vodka and took two big gulps right from the bottle.

“Jesus, that wasn’t a challenge,” Eliot said.

Fen laughed quietly next to him, but she stifled it when Alice turned to face the two of them. Eliot felt like two kids caught giggling in class by the teacher. She stared him down for moment before taking another drink then setting the bottle down on the counter.

“Did you just find out that the massive interplanar organization you agreed to reform two months ago is being undermined by a fascist dictatorship possibly led by your dead ex-boyfriend?” she asked bluntly. “Because I did.”

Eliot had a lot of cruel responses at the tip of his tongue, but he was just so, so tired. Besides, they actually needed Alice’s help, and he figured he and Margo had done enough to complicate that the day before. So instead, he just nodded his head in her direction.

“Fair enough,” he said.

She groaned and sat in the chair across from him. She lifted the bottle and held out to him. He raised an eyebrow at her in question.

“I think there’s enough misery to go around,” she said.

Eliot took the bottle from her hand and took a drink. He sat it back down on the table between them. The two of them stared at each other, not sure what this was or how to proceed. It was Fen who broke the tension by clearing her throat and scraping her chair as she stood up.

“I’m just going to go,” she said. She placed her hand on Eliot’s shoulder and quietly asked, “Are you good here?”

He nodded and gave her a reassuring smile. She glanced at Alice and back at him before turning to go upstairs. This left Eliot alone with Alice for the first time since Quentin’s funeral. His phone lit up, and he looked down to see a text from Fen.

“I’ll fight her if you want me to.”

It was followed by several knife emojis. He rolled his eyes fondly and shoved the phone back into his pocket. There was something comforting and hilarious about Fen always being ready to throw down at a moment’s notice. She was like an angry kitten except with opposable thumbs and sharp knives.

It was quiet for a few uncomfortable moments, and Eliot thought about being a coward and running upstairs to find wherever Fen had disappeared to or joining the group in the living room. Alice reached out for the bottle again before he could though and took a sip, wincing at the burn. It reminded Eliot of her trying to drink that disaster of a long island iced tea back in the Physical Kids Cottage, and he couldn’t help but warm to her a little with that memory. They were so young and naive. How had they all gotten so fucked up since then?

“I know you hate me, and I don’t really blame you for that,” Alice said softly. “I went on a pretty extensive apology tour but never quite made it to you and Margo.”

Eliot sighed, “I don’t hate you, Alice.”

“Well, you’re doing a very convincing act of it then,” she said.

He reached out for the bottle and took a sip before placing it back between them.

“It’s a bit more complicated than that,” he admitted.

“Yeah,” Alice agreed before taking another drink.

They were quiet for a few awkward moments before Alice said, “I know you loved him, and I’m pretty sure he loved you too.”

Eliot’s head shot up at that. She didn’t say it with malice or anger. She’d said it like a simple fact. Eliot gaped at her, not sure what to say in return. She laughed bitterly before he could get very far and looked down at her hands.

“You don’t have to pretend it’s not true for me, Eliot,” she said. “I’m honestly not even sure why he got back with me at the end. He wasn’t in a good place, and I should have known better.”

Eliot had heard the whispers about Quentin’s mental health before the mirror world despite his attempts not to. No one wanted to call it suicide, but the subtext was there. It was something Eliot had spent a lot of time trying to deny to himself because he couldn’t let himself believe Quentin chose this.

“He was just so sad,” Alice said, “It was like he’d given up. Then when he discovered his discipline, it was like something came to life in him. It made me hopeful that maybe what we had was still there too.” She looked down at her hands and shook her head. “It was stupid of me. We never worked in the first place, and I deserved to be more than a consolation prize.”

She did deserve more than that, but Eliot couldn’t help but feel a little angry listening to her explanation. She’d gotten what Eliot never had, a chance for closure and reconciliation. She’d gotten time. He would have given anything to have one moment with him before everything, and he wouldn’t be sitting here regretting it now. It was a little out of spite that he felt compelled to share the next thought with her.

“He asked me to be with him, you know,” he said.

Alice glanced up at him then, and Eliot felt bad that he took a little satisfaction from the surprise on her face.

“It was during the key quest,” he explained. “In order to get the third key, Q and I had to solve the beauty of all life in Fillory.”

“You mean the mosaic?” Alice asked.

He nodded. Of course she remembered it from the books. Maybe he would have too if he’d bothered to read them.

“We foolishly thought that we could solve it and get back to everyone with the key in a matter of days or weeks. Turns out the quest was quite literal with the whole ‘of all life’ thing,” he laughed to himself, doing the air quotes. 

“We spent fifty years together in that timeline. We had a family. A son, grandkids. It was beautiful,” Eliot said, “and maybe it didn’t happen in the end, but we remembered it.”

“Q never mentioned any of that,” Alice said, disbelief coloring her voice.

“We didn’t really mention it to anyone,” Eliot said.

They sat quietly for a moment while Alice thought about everything Eliot had just unloaded on her. 

“So what happened when he asked you to be with him?” she asked, letting her curiosity get the best of her.

Eliot had to admire her for having this discussion. He wasn’t sure he would if he were in her shoes. He hadn’t really thought through explaining this next part though.

“I said no,” he said quietly.

Alice laughed humorlessly at that and picked up the bottle for another drink. As she sat it back down, she said, “Well, that was fucking stupid.”

“Yeah,” he agreed bitterly, “I’ve had enough time over the last year to work that one out for myself, but thanks for the reminder.”

“Do you still love him?” she asked, ignoring his sarcastic response.

He couldn’t lie about that even if he wanted to, so he said, “Yes. I do.”

She nodded shortly and sat up straight. 

“Well, I hope Quentin gets the chance to decide what he wants after you tell him that then,” she said.

Eliot knew this was as close to a truce as they were going to get. They were on opposing sides of this coin in many ways, but they both loved Quentin. Death is the great equalizer, after all. He was pretty sure he’d heard that somewhere.

“Yeah, me too,” he said sincerely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one got long, but all of this needed to get out of the way before the action could start!


	4. Chapter 4

The plan ended up being simple enough. The first part of it at least. Penny, Julia, and Eliot would travel inside the castle, grab Quentin, and then travel to Brakebills. Penny could realistically do this step on his own, but everyone agreed that sending him in without backup was inadvisable at best. Eliot knew the castle, and Julia had dealt with a similar version of Quentin in timeline 23. It also factored in that neither of them was willing to be left behind. Margo got Dean Fogg on board, after what sounded like a very exhausting phone conversation, and he would be waiting for them at Brakebills when Penny traveled them there from Fillory. Easy, right?

Eliot had an awful feeling about the whole thing. Nothing was ever easy for any of them. There was so much room for error and so many possible deviations that he couldn’t keep count. None of them had any idea what awaited them in the castle. They’d just have to cross that bridge when they got to it though.

Margo had predictably won the fight about the Library and was going with Alice and Kady to poke around. She’d decided Josh was going with them too, and no one bothered to argue with her after the morning’s drama. That plan was a bit more vague. None of them really had any idea about where to begin considering Alice had so far been kept to the Neitherlands branch and not allowed access to any other branches. None of them were particularly excited about the mission or the fact that it was happening while the others were going to Fillory, but it was decided that they didn’t have the time to waste. Time in Fillory was passing at an alarming rate, and no one wanted to wait another 300 years Fillory time to figure out how the Library was involved or how to stop it.

In short, they were all on equally improbable missions and fucked in their own ways, which was pretty par for the course.

Margo pulled Eliot aside as they were all preparing to go their own ways. Eliot followed her out onto the balcony. She closed the door behind them and immediately launched herself into his arms. He almost lost his balance, but he managed to steady them both. He silently hugged her to him, not questioning her sudden burst of affection until she pulled away far enough to look into his eyes.

“You be careful, El,” she said forcefully. “I know it’s Quentin and that’s all that’s going on in your brain right now, but you have to be smart. Do you understand?”

Eliot nodded and reached a hand up to cradle the back of her head. He leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead, his lips lingering there for just a moment. He heard Margo let out a soft broken noise when he pulled away. He hadn’t really considered that this was the first time that the two of them would be separated since the hospital, but they were both feeling it now.

“Give ‘em hell in the Library,” he said, a grin spreading across his face when she choked out a laugh.

“Those stuffy sons of bitches won’t know what hit them,” Margo promised through a watery smile.

“There’s my Bambi,” he said softly. 

The balcony door opened then, and Penny stuck his head out.

“We’re ready,” he said to Eliot.

Eliot gave Margo’s shoulders one last squeeze before the two of them followed Penny inside. Eliot joined Julia and Penny where they stood in the center of the living room and looked to Margo where she stood with Josh, Kady, and Alice. 

“Go get him, tiger,” Margo said, a grin spread across her face.

Eliot met her smile with one of his own. 

“Alright, we ready?” Penny asked him and Julia.

They both nodded, and before they could blink they were standing in the familiar halls of Castle Whitespire.

To be exact, they were standing in the hallway where he and Margo used to talk privately away from the fairies. Eliot was surprised at how similar it looked considering how much the castle had changed from the outside. Remembering the circumstances of their visit jolted him into action. He did a quick scan around the hall before motioning for Penny and Julia to follow him as he slowly advanced toward the throne room. It was suspiciously quiet. Eliot had suspected at least some measure of chaos from someone dramatic enough to refer to themselves as The Dark King, but this was Quentin to some extent.

Suddenly, a hand clamped over his mouth. He shot a look over his shoulder and barely met Julia’s terrified expression before he was being dragged into a room and the door shut behind him. The hand on his mouth dropped, and he spun around to face his assailant.

“Tick?” Eliot asked incredulously.

The smaller man stood in front of him, staring at Eliot with the same amount of shock on his face that Eliot felt.

Tick’s voice was frazzled as he asked, “Sir, what are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing!” Eliot screeched as quietly as he could. 

He spun around, realizing that he’d lost Julia and Penny.

“Fuck,” he muttered, “hang on.”

He quietly opened the door to find the two of them standing outside and motioned for them to come in. They shared a wary look but did as he said. The four of them were squeezed into what amounted to a supply closet. It wasn’t exactly spacious. Eliot cast a noise cancellation ward on the door and then turned back around to the group.

“Okay, we don’t have much time,” he said. “So, Tick, start talking. What the everloving fuck is going on here?”

Penny and Julia were quiet, for which Eliot was grateful. He did not have time nor patience for introductions. Tick turned on his trademark customer service smile, and Eliot resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

“Your _Former_ Majesty,” he said, and Eliot rolled his eyes.

He asked, “Is the ‘former’ really necessary?”

Tick carried on, “Sorry to be blunt, but we thought you and High King Margo were dead.”

Eliot’s patience was nearly at zero, but Julia stepped in before he could tell Tick to get to the point.

“Wait, how are you alive?” she asked. “If you were in the castle when Margo and Eliot were here, that was over 300 years ago.”

Tick’s eyes grew wide.

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about. High King Margo was only banished ten years ago,” he said.

“That’s not possible,” Eliot interjected. “At least 300 years has passed here since Quentin showed up according to the people we met outside.”

“I assure you, that is not true,” Tick said, his voice clearly indicating that he was questioning Eliot’s sanity.

“Oh my god, we don’t have time for this,” Penny said, interrupting their circular conversation. “Just tell us how we can get to Quentin because we’ve got to get him out of here.”

Tick turned his controlled smile to Penny.

“King Quentin is in the throne room,” he explained, “but I would advise you not to disturb him. He does not take kindly to unexpected visitors.”

“Noted,” Penny said. He turned to Eliot and said, “Come on. We’ve got to move.”

Eliot put his hand on Tick’s shoulder.

“Tick, listen to me,” he said, “We’re leaving and we’re taking Quentin with us. I need you to keep things under control here. Whatever that even means right now.”

Tick looked surprised for a second before schooling his face.

“Yes, your Former Majesty,” he said. “I will do my best.”

Eliot nodded and turned back to Julia and Penny.

“Okay, let’s go.”

Tick went the opposite direction while the three of them slowly approached the entrance to the throne room. Eliot pressed his body against the cool stone wall and braced himself before peeking around the corner.

No matter how ready he’d tried to be, nothing could have prepared him for the sight of a perfectly healthy and very alive Quentin slouched on the High King’s throne. His breath caught in his throat. He looked just as Eliot remembered him except for the slightly shorter hair. The look suited him though. Eliot had always wanted him to show off his face more often. He was wearing traditional Fillorian royal clothes, a black satin button up shirt with gold embellishments over a pair of dark trousers with the crown resting atop his head. He seemed to be taking the whole Dark King thing to an extreme which Eliot would find funny under other circumstances.

Quentin was talking to a guard, who was nodding along quietly and looking down at his feet. Quentin finished talking, and the guard scurried away, leaving him alone in the throne room. He took a sip out of a goblet sitting on a small table next to him and leaned back in his throne. Eliot felt Julia jump behind him when Quentin spoke.

“Whoever you are, you can come out now,” he said loudly, sounding bored. “I know you’re there, so there’s no point in hiding.”

Eliot took a step forward, and Julia grabbed his wrist. 

“What are you doing?” she hissed.

Eliot turned back to her and gently pulled his wrist out of her grasp.

“Just be ready to grab him,” he instructed.

She looked like she wasn’t really sure about this, which to be fair neither was he, but she nodded and stepped back into where Penny was leaning against the wall. 

“Really? Are you going to make me come and find you?” Quentin drawled.

Eliot pressed his lips together and closed his eyes. It was now or never.

He felt like he was going to throw up as he took a step around the corner into the throne room. Quentin’s eyes met his, and he stopped. Everything stopped. Quentin’s bored demeanor disappeared, and he sat up straighter. Eliot felt like his heart was going to beat out of his chest. Fuck, he had not been ready for this. Quentin continued to stare at Eliot with wide eyes as he sat down his drink.

“Well,” he said, sounding inexplicably nonchalant, “Took you long enough to show up.”

Eliot took a cautious step forward. 

“Q?” he asked, his voice filled with reverence. “Is that really you?”

Quentin turned his head to the side and gestured vaguely with his hand.

“Yes, and no,” he said.

Eliot took a few more steps forward. He was careful, like he was approaching a wounded animal. 

“Care to elaborate?” he asked hopefully.

Quentin gave him the sort of smile one might give to a toddler who asked a stupid question. It was dripping with condescension, and Eliot decided he did not like that look on him.

“Oh, Eliot,” he said. “How long has it been for you since I died? A few weeks? No wonder you’re acting like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Something about Quentin made Eliot deeply uncomfortable. He couldn’t make himself stop walking though until he was stood at the bottom of the steps right in front of him. Quentin motioned to the chair next to him.

“Why don’t you come take a seat? I won’t bite,” he said. Then, to Eliot’s surprise, he winked. “Unless you want me to.”

Eliot found himself at a loss for words, which was not familiar territory for him. He stammered until Quentin started laughing hysterically.

“I’m fucking with you, but you should see your face” he said between laughs. “Seriously, come sit down and let’s talk. I’m sure you have a lot of questions.”

Still speechless, Eliot nodded and ascended the stairs to sit on the throne next to Quentin. He was close enough to reach out and touch. If he lifted his hand, he could cup Quentin’s face, rest his hand on the back of his neck. He didn’t dare though. He pressed his back into the opposite side of the throne just for good measure.

“So, uh,” he started, “I guess I’ll start with the obvious. What are you doing here, Q?”

With Quentin turned in his chair to face him, Eliot could see Julia and Penny over his shoulder sneaking across the entrance of the throne room out of the corner of his eye. He just had to keep Quentin talking long enough for them to get close enough. 

“Fillory is my home,” Quentin shrugged. “The whole being dead thing didn’t exactly take, and now I finally get to be a king. This is how it was supposed to be.”

He gestured his arms to the castle around them as he spoke.

“I see,” Eliot said carefully. He subconsciously leaned forward towards him then, which made Quentin raise his eyebrows curiously.

“Why didn’t you come to us?” Eliot asked, his voice verging on the hysteria he was trying to keep tamped down. “Q, we’ve all been mourning you, back on Earth. The Quentin I know would want to go to his friends. What happened to you?”

Quentin leaned forward and placed his elbow on the armrest of his throne nearest Eliot. His chin came to rest in his hand as he stared up at him. Mere inches separated them now. Eliot instinctually wanted to flinch away, but he held his ground. Penny and Julia were just a few feet away, watching and waiting for the right moment.

“Perhaps death gave me a new perspective,” Quentin explained, sounding thoughtful. He maintained eye contact with Eliot. “There’s just so much possibility here. So much… power.” He lifted his other hand and gently brushed one of Eliot’s curls away from his face, his fingers grazing Eliot’s temple. Eliot gulped. Quentin continued in a softer voice, “You could join me though, if you want. We could rule Fillory together.”

Eliot didn’t know what to say. Quentin dropped his hand from Eliot’s hair and reached for the hand on his lap instead. He laced their fingers together. 

“Why the fuck not?” Quentin asked. 

It was at that moment that Penny and Julia leapt out from behind the column where they’d been hiding.

“Hold on!” Penny shouted.

Eliot gripped Quentin’s hand so tightly it hurt, and Penny placed a hand on Quentin’s shoulder. The throne room disappeared, and they were suddenly surrounded by the bleak walls of the safe room in Brakebills.

Quentin looked around wildly before his eyes landed on Eliot.

“You tricked me!” he screamed.

Dean Fogg suddenly appeared behind Quentin, pushing him into the chair at the center of the room. Hands gripped Eliot’s shoulders and jerked him away from Quentin, but Quentin only held onto his hand tighter.

“Eliot!” Quentin yelled.

“Get him out of here!” Dean Fogg shouted.

Their hands ripped apart as Penny dragged Eliot out of the room and shut the door behind them. 

Quentin’s screams could be heard in the hallway as he struggled against the constraints Dean Fogg placed on him. Penny let go of Eliot outside of the room, and Eliot kept walking until he got to the end of the hallway. His hands tugged at his hair, and he stopped when he heard footsteps catching up to him. Julia appeared in his line of sight.

“Hey,” she said, “We got him here. You did great.”

“I-I,” he stuttered. He gestured back to the safe room. “Julia, that wasn’t Quentin. Something is very wrong with him.”

She placed a hand on his back and started rubbing small circles against his shoulder blades. He breathed in and out and closed his eyes, letting the touch ground him.

“We’ll figure it out,” she said gently. “Dean Fogg is going to talk to him and figure out what’s wrong, and we’ll fix it.”

He looked up and met her eyes. There was a fierceness behind them. Eliot suddenly understood how a young, shy, depressed Quentin had latched onto her. She said, “Eliot, listen to me, we’re going to get him back. The real him. Whatever it takes. I need you to stay with me now though, okay?”

He nodded and said, “Okay, yeah, thanks.”

Another muffled scream echoed into the hallway, and Eliot flinched.

“Why don’t we go sit down in Dean Fogg’s office while we wait?” she suggested. 

She grabbed his hand and pulled him along, not waiting for an answer. He let her lead him down the familiar hallways of the administration building. When they rounded the corner, he almost laughed when he saw Todd of all people waiting outside the room where they were headed. Todd stood up straight when he saw them.

“Eliot! Julia!” he exclaimed. 

“Todd, why don’t you get us something to drink?” Julia asked. “Some hot tea, maybe?”

Todd nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, of course! I’ll be right back.”

He disappeared, and Julia pulled Eliot into the office shutting the door behind them.

“I am really not in the mood for Todd right now,” she said.

Eliot laughed, but it came out like a strangled noise.

“Very few people are ever in the mood for Todd,” he said.

They sat down in the chairs in front of Dean Fogg’s desk to wait. A few minutes later, Penny opened the door and stepped inside to join them.

“Any news?” Julia asked.

“Fogg’s still in there,” Penny said. 

Eliot didn’t look up, but he heard Penny pull up another chair on Julia’s other side. He wished Margo was there. There wasn’t really anything more that she could be doing, but at least she would know how Eliot felt. He tightened the hand Quentin had held into a fist. It was still red from how tightly he’d gripped it. He knew in his bones it was him. He could still feel the ghost of his touch on his hand, on his face. It was everything he’d prayed for on every desperate night he’d laid awake in the bedroom at Kady’s apartment. 

The door burst open, and Todd walked in carrying a tray with a kettle and two empty tea mugs on it. 

“I made chamomile because, well, you seemed a little stressed,” he said as he sat the tray down on Dean Fogg’s desk. 

He noticed Penny then and asked, “Would you like me to grab you a mug?”

Penny gave him a deadpan look and asked, “What do you think?”

Todd nodded and pointed to the door. “Right, I’ll just wait outside then,” he said.

Penny stared him down as he hurried out of the room and closed the door. Julia reached forward to pour a cup and handed it to Eliot. He smiled at her gratefully and took it. The warmth from the cup made him shiver. He hadn’t realized he was cold, but the room suddenly felt freezing. They all waited in silence for what could have been five minutes or an hour until Dean Fogg finally opened the door and came to sit at the desk in front of them.

“Well?” Julia asked, “What’s wrong with him?”

Dean Fogg sighed and leaned forward to place his elbows on the desk.

“I’m afraid you were right,” he said. “Quentin’s shade is gone.”

Eliot couldn’t find the energy to be shocked. They had all suspected it might be the case. It certainly explained the deeply unsettling way he’d behaved in the castle. 

“Okay, well, I guess we’re going to the Underworld then,” Julia said.

Dean Fogg pulled out a bottle from under his desk and poured a shot. He downed it and placed the glass back on his desk.

“I feel it’s my duty as your Dean to advise against doing that, but when has that ever stopped any of you before?” he asked sardonically.

“Can you keep him safe here until we’re back?” Julia asked, ignoring him completely.

“Yes, he will be safe here,” Dean Fogg promised.

Eliot stood up, and they all turned to him.

“I need to talk to him,” he said, “before we go.”

“Eliot, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Julia said kindly.

Eliot shook his head.

“It’s definitely not,” he agreed, “but I still need to. I won’t take long.”

Julia nodded then, and he looked at Fogg.

“Fine,” Dean Fogg said in an exasperated voice. “Five minutes.”

Eliot followed him out of the room and down to the locked door at the end of the winding hallways. They stopped outside, and Eliot braced himself. He couldn’t hear anything coming from inside, but he knew Quentin was waiting. Dean Fogg clapped him on the shoulder once as he unlocked the door and pushed it open for Eliot. 

Quentin’s head snapped in their direction before he laughed and looked away.

“Of course it’s you,” he said.

The door shut behind Eliot, and he paced forward until he stood a foot in front of Quentin.

“Q, I know this isn’t really you,” Eliot said, “but we’re going to get you back.”

“What if I don’t want you to?” Quentin asked. “Humans are so weak. All of those emotions only get in the way.”

“You wouldn’t say that,” Eliot said, shaking his head. “You are the bravest, kindest person I know, Q. You care about people, and that’s what makes you so strong.”

Quentin scoffed and turned his head to the side.

Eliot continued, “You may not see that now, but you’re just going to have to trust me.”

Quentin jerked his head back to face Eliot. His voice betrayed a hint of desperation as he asked, “Why can’t you see that this is better? We could be together! We could be kings. Just you and me. Nothing else would have to matter. Just get me out of here, El, and we can go back.”

Eliot felt what was left of his heart break as he shook his head.

“I’m sorry, Q,” he said quietly. “I can’t do that. This is for your own good.”

Quentin scoffed at him and shook his head in disbelief.

“I’ll be back for you,” Eliot promised. 

“Yeah, I’m sure you will,” Quentin muttered under his breath. 

With that, Eliot walked back over to the door. He placed his hand on the doorknob and paused. He looked over his shoulder to find Quentin watching him.

“I’m sorry, Q,” he said.

Quentin didn’t have time to respond before Eliot opened the door and slipped out. Dean Fogg was waiting outside and locked it behind him. Julia and Penny stood a few feet away, and Eliot walked toward them looking straight ahead.

“Let’s go,” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> look i'm SORRY i love eliot with my whole heart and he is going to be happy or so help me i swear to you


	5. Chapter 5

Eliot wasn’t sure what he’d had in mind about how one gets to the Underworld, but dragons definitely weren’t on the top of his list of possibilities. He’d sort of pictured himself storming out of Brakebills and right into the fire, but in reality they had to go back to Kady’s apartment and work out how they were going to bribe a dragon. On top of everything else he was currently dealing with, that might as well happen too.

“We need something valuable,” Julia explained. “Last time Q & I went, we traded the button to Fillory.”

“Oh yes, I remember,” Eliot said dryly. 

That hadn’t exactly gone over well when Quentin told him.

“Yeah, sorry about that,” Julia said.

Eliot waved off her apology. All things considered, it wasn’t really the biggest problem any of them had faced in recent years. They tossed ideas back and forth ranging from ancient artifacts to Brakebills textbooks, but nothing really stood out as exceptionally valuable to a dragon. That is, until Eliot realized exactly what it had to be.

“Oh God, she’s going to kill us,” he said.

Julia and Penny looked at him expectedly.

“The ice axes,” he said.

Julia’s eyes lit up. She said, “Oh my god. Yes, that’s perfect!”

Penny scoffed, “Well, I sure as hell am not going to be the one to tell Margo.”

The door swung open then, and Margo, Kady, Alice, and Josh strode through.

“Tell Margo what?” Margo asked.

Julia and Penny both looked at Eliot. 

“Really?” he asked them. Cowards.

Margo walked around the couch to sit on his lap, wrapping her arms around his neck.

“Spit it out, El,” she said.

“We kind of need your ice axes to bribe a dragon?” he explained, but it came out more like a question.

“Uh-uh,” she said. 

Julia leaned forward then, and Margo turned to look at her. To her credit, Julia didn’t cower under her glare.

“Margo, I know it’s not ideal, but we’ve got to get to the Underworld. Q’s shade is trapped there, and our only round-trip ticket is by dragon,” she said.

“We kind of have a lot to catch you up on,” Eliot added.

Margo slid off his lap and onto the sofa next to him. 

“No, you don’t,” she said.

She held her hand out to Alice, who took a book out of her backpack and handed it to her. Margo placed the book in Eliot’s hands. It was a green, hardcover book. He flipped it over and gasped when the saw the name on the side. Quentin Coldwater.

“How did you..?” he asked.

“We stole it,” Margo said, looking pleased with herself.

“Actually, we have to take it back,” Alice added.

Margo turned to face her and fixed her with an exasperated look.

“Is it, like, your mission in life to ruin everything for me?” she asked.

Alice rolled her eyes, and reached across the table to take the book from Eliot. She flipped it open to a bookmarked page and handed it back.

“Here,” she said.

“What does it say?” Eliot asked.

Margo smacked him on the arm, and he responded, “Ow!”

“Just read something for once in your goddamn life, El!” she said.

“Fine,” he mumbled, looking down at the book in his hands.

~

_Quentin took the metro card from Penny._

_“This is as far as I go, man,” Penny said._

_Quentin stared into the empty space before him. He’d expected to see some sort of doorway or dark abyss staring back, but it just looked like the other side of an empty office building. He turned around to see Penny waiting. On an impulse, he ran back and wrapped his arms around him. Penny returned the hug before giving him a reassuring smile and walking back in the direction they’d came. This was it. He closed his eyes and took a step forward, ready to embrace whatever came next._

_It felt like he was falling. Falling, falling, into nothingness. Then all of a sudden he was standing on solid ground. He opened his eyes and found himself in a field. Green, rolling hills spread out into the distance as far as he could see, and there was a woods to the left of him. He looked more closely and saw a man standing at the edge of the treeline._

_“Hello?” he called._

_The man looked his way then, and in a blink Quentin was standing in front of him. He looked to where he’d been standing previously then back to the strange man. He was dressed in a grey suit._

_“Is this Heaven?” Quentin asked._

_The man chuckled. “No, not exactly,” he said._

_He extended a hand to Quentin, and continued, “Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Hades.”_

_Quentin shook his hand, and replied, “Nice to meet you? Uh, what am I doing here?” He looked around. “And where is here?”_

_“Elysian Fields. You’re in the Underworld,” Hades explained. He gestured behind him to a desk and a set of chairs that Quentin was sure hadn’t been there before. “Come, sit. We have much to discuss.”_

_“Uh, okay,” Quentin stammered._

_He followed Hades and sat in the chair across from him._

_“Normally when you walked through that door, you’d have gone straight to whatever karmic circle had been determined for you,” Hades explained, “but I sort of intercepted you, I guess you could say.”_

_“Why?” Quentin asked, his eyebrows knitted together._

_“Because I owe you, Quentin,” Hades said. “Well, you and your friends really, but you’re the one who’s here.”_

_“You owe me?” Quentin asked, disbelieving that there was anything the god of the Underworld could possibly owe him for._

_“You may not be aware, but the Monster that was possessing your friend killed my dear Persephone,” he said._

_“Oh,” Quentin said lamely. “I, I’m sorry.”_

_“Thank you,” Hades replied. “While I’m well aware it wasn’t your intention, you and your friends avenged her death by eliminating that mistake of the gods once and for all. You bravely gave your life doing it.”_

_Quentin didn’t really know what to say. He hadn’t been trying to avenge anyone when he mended the mirror and tossed the Monster’s bottle inside. He’d just been trying to finish it. Eliot was safe. Julia was safe. And it had to be done. He didn’t feel like it was very brave looking back now at all it had cost him._

_“For your bravery, I would like to offer you a choice,” Hades said._

_“What choice?” Quentin asked._

_“I can send you back to Earth,” Hades explained. “You can have another chance at your mortal life, if you want it that is. If not, you will continue on to your eternity. This is a one-time offer, Quentin. Next time you die, you will stay here forever.”_

_Quentin’s eyes grew wide. He could go back. He remembered the bonfire and watching all of his friends grieve. When he’d made the decision to cast that spell, he hadn’t considered what it would do to the people he loved. He’d just been tired. Watching the funeral they’d held though, that had forced him to realize the depths of what he’d truly sacrificed. Alice with the coffee cup he’d mended in Brakebills South, Julia with the deck of playing cards, Margo with his crown, and Eliot. Eliot with the peach he’d tossed into the flames. He could go back…_

_“Do you know what you want to do?” Hades asked._

_Quentin nodded. It wasn’t even really a question._

_“Send me back,” he said._

_Hades nodded, a smile spreading across his face._

_“Very well,” he said._

_He snapped his fingers, and Quentin was falling again. This time when he opened his eyes, he was in an office. There were three people dressed in unmistakable Librarian attire standing in front of him. Before he could ask what was going on, one of them stepped forward and plunged her hand into his chest. He gasped, doubling over from the immense pain of it. When she stepped away from him, she was holding a glowing red orb in her hand. He blinked and it became a younger version of himself. His shade._

_He didn’t feel as upset by the loss of it as he thought he would. It was sort of a relief, to have that weight gone. The woman placed her hand on his younger self’s back and led him away through a door that appeared on the wall in front of them._

_One of the remaining men approached him, a sly grin on his face, and asked, “How would you like to be High King of Fillory, Quentin?”_

_Quentin’s interest piqued. He knew he had been on his way to Earth, but he felt detached from that now. What was there on Earth for him? His friends didn’t need him. They were fine. Fillory was where he was supposed to mean something. Fillory was his destiny, and it had been stolen from him._

_The man placed a hand on his shoulder, and they were in Castle Whitespire._

_“Time to take what’s rightfully yours,” the man said, nudging him towards the throne room._

~

Eliot flipped through the remaining pages, skimming the details of Quentin’s reign as the Dark King until he got to the part where he, Julia, and Penny had shown up. It ended with them at Brakebills. Something strange stuck out to him.

“I don’t understand, where’s the 300 years he’s been in Fillory?” Eliot asked.

He passed the book to Julia and Penny, who hurriedly read through the section Eliot had just read.

“That’s the thing,” Alice said, “According to his book, he hasn’t been there for 300 years.”

“Huh,” Eliot said, “Tick said that too.”

Margo turned to him. She asked, “You talked to Tick?”

“More like he attacked me, but yes,” Eliot said. “He told us it had only been ten years since you were banished.”

“So, the time fuckery continues,” Margo said.

Julia finished reading and looked up at them.

“Guys, you’re missing the most important part,” she said.

She started laughing, and she turned to meet Eliot’s eyes as she said, “Q is alive!”

Eliot hadn’t really processed all that he’d read yet, and Julia’s realization struck him like a lightning bolt. She was right. Q was really, truly alive and not just on a field trip from the afterlife. He laughed then too, and Margo reached for his hand. He turned to her, and she had tears in her eyes.

“He came back, El,” she said.

Eliot felt happiness bubbling in his chest, and the force of it was almost too much for him to contain. It was a foreign, overwhelming feeling, something he’d never really expected to feel again if he was honest. For once, this looked like a plan that could actually work. 

“We have to get his shade back!” he said, his excitement flooding his voice.

Julia nodded, smiling widely back at him.

“It won’t be easy, but we can do it,” she promised.

Everyone turned to Margo then, and she looked around the circle. 

“Ugh, fine,” she said. She reached behind her and grabbed the axes, placing them on the coffee table. “Q is going to owe me for the rest of his life,” she said indignantly.

Eliot kissed the side of her head.

“Thank you, Bambi,” he said.

“Yeah, yeah,” she said with a wave of her hand. “Just go get your man and thank me later.”

There was a palpable excitement in the air as the group constructed their plan to get to the Underworld. Even Alice’s spirits seemed to have lifted, and she’d smiled when Eliot caught her eye. Eliot learned from Julia that the orphaned shades were kept in a place called Elysium. They would have to get a dragon to send them to the Underworld then sneak past reception to get there. 

“When Q and I were there, there was a portal next to the elevator,” she explained. “We should be able to take that straight into Persephone’s office.”

Eliot and Julia said they were going, and it wasn't really a question. No one was better qualified than Julia, and probably no one could have stopped Eliot if they tried.

“The East River dragon is probably our best option, unless anyone has any baby teeth they’d like to spare,” Julia said.

“Uh, yeah, pass,” Penny said.

“Okay, so, East River dragon it is,” Eliot agreed.

They didn’t waste any time getting ready to go. Margo and Penny were going with them because someone needed to watch their bodies while they were gone. Leaving them lying on the pier unattended seemed like a recipe for disaster.

Eliot wasn’t sure what he’d expected from a dragon herald, but he was a little confused to see Julia confidently walk up to an ordinary looking man sitting at a desk at the end of a dock.

He looked up, seemingly recognizing her.

“Julia,” he said, “I wasn’t expecting to see you.”

“Yeah, well, we need a favor from the Great Lady of the East River,” she said.

“That’s the herald?” Margo whispered next to Eliot.

The man raised an eyebrow in question at Julia.

“And what do you have to offer in return?” he asked.

Margo stepped forward with her ice axes, not quite handing them over. He looked them over and whistled.

“These are very valuable,” he said approvingly, “but it is up to our Great Lady of course to judge whether it is a worthy offering.”

He turned around then to the water.

“Our Great Lady of the East River, these magicians seek an audience with you.”

Eliot and Margo exchanged glances as the man spoke to the empty space, but it only took a few moments before the surface of the water began to move. 

“Holy shit,” Eliot muttered.

The enormous dragon rose from the water, shaking drops of it off her head and getting them all wet in the process. 

“This had better be good, Harold,” she said.

Julia stepped forward then and said, “Our Great Lady, Eliot and I seek passage to the Underworld.”

The dragon hummed thoughtfully. “And what do you offer in return?” she asked.

Margo handed Julia her axes, and Julia held them out in front of her.

“Possession-dispelling axes,” she said. “From Fillory.”

The dragon leaned forward to get a closer look. 

“They will suffice,” she said. “You will have 24 hours.” 

Julia looked relieved, and Eliot let out the breath he’d been holding. 

“Thank you,” Julia said.

The dragon stared at her for a moment. Eliot was starting to get worried the dragon was reconsidering. She looked confused though, well, as much as a dragon could convey emotion.

“I see you’ve made your choice after all,” the dragon finally said.

Julia glanced quickly at Penny then back to her.

“Something like that,” Julia replied.

“Hm, well, that is your business,” she said, “but I must say I am surprised.”

Julia pressed her lips together before continuing, “We’re ready to go now.”

“Fine,” the dragon shrugged. “Remember, 24 hours, or I’ll eat you.”

“You’ll what?!” Margo yelled.

Eliot looked down and saw his own body lying on the ground next to Julia’s in front of them. He looked to his side and saw another Julia standing next to him.

“You didn’t say anything about her eating us!” he yelled.

Julia shrugged. “Oops?” she said.

Eliot shook his head and said, “Whatever, let’s just hurry.”

The dragon gave them one last look before they were suddenly standing in an elevator. Taking an elevator down to the Underworld was a lot more literal than Eliot had anticipated. Julia fidgeted next to him while they descended. Finally, the elevator jerked to a stop and the doors opened.

“Welcome to the Underworld!” 

A cheerful looking man stood before them. 

“Yeah, yeah, we’ll take a number,” Julia said, brushing past him.

Eliot smiled at him and hurried to follow her. She walked up to a generic looking ticket machine and pulled one out.

“Trust me, that was one fight not worth having,” she said.

He was in no position to argue with her considering she had been here before. He just stood next to her while she scanned the room. Her eyes landed on a supply closet next to the elevator.

“Bingo,” she said. 

She started walking that way, and Eliot glanced over his shoulder at the crowd of people watching a television behind him in what appeared to be a waiting room. Luckily, no one paid much attention to them as they snuck behind the wall and made it to the door. Julia opened it, and Eliot followed her through.

They pushed through a closet full of clothes and came out in a pink room. It looked very bright and cheerful to be a part of the Underworld.

“This was Persephone’s room,” Julia explained. “This was where Q and I found Alice’s shade.”

Eliot looked around the empty space as he followed Julia forward into the hallway.

“So, how do we know where Q’s shade will be?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” Julia said, “but he’ll be here somewhere.”

They walked down an elegant staircase, and Eliot was surprised to see children running around everywhere on the lower level of the house.

“Oh god,” he said, “I am not good with kids.”

Julia laughed.

“Don’t worry, Q was a loner when we were kids,” she said, “he’s probably off hiding in a corner somewhere.”

They made their way through room after room, and Eliot was starting to get impatient. Then Julia came to a stop and reached out, feeling for his arm.

“There,” she said.

She pointed to a little boy curled up in a large red chair. He had shoulder length sandy brown hair and a frown on his face as he concentrated on doing something with his hands. Eliot felt like something was clawing at his heart. He looked just like Teddy.

“The kids here make small miracles for people on Earth,” she explained, oblivious to the moment Eliot was having.

Suddenly a toy car that had been broken re-assembled itself in front of them before disappearing into thin air, and the boy grinned triumphantly. Eliot smiled to himself. Of course Quentin was fixing things.

They approached slowly until they were just a few feet away from the younger Quentin. He looked up from what he was doing then, and his eyes widened.

“Eliot!” he yelled.

He flew out of the chair and wrapped his arms around Eliot’s middle. Eliot gave Julia a shocked look before crouching down to get on the boy’s level.

Looking into his young brown eyes wasn’t what Eliot had expected at all. This wasn’t just a young Quentin. This _was_ Quentin. It was everything that had been missing from the man Eliot had found in the castle. His goodness, his warmth, his overwhelming sincerity, his heart. He didn’t know how, but he could feel it all. He gripped the boy tightly and fought back the tears prickling in his eyes. The boy held on just as tightly until Eliot pulled away. He noticed Julia then and ran over to give her a hug too. She laughed, seeming shocked by his excitement. 

“You look exactly the same as when we were kids,” she said, marveling at him.

The boy grinned bashfully at her, and Eliot laughed to himself. Some things never change.

The boy turned more serious then, and asked, “How is he doing, without me?”

“Not too good,” Julia answered truthfully, “but we’re here to take you to him.”

“We better hurry then,” the boy said.

Eliot turned around then, sensing someone behind them. A man in a suit had appeared seemingly out of thin air. Several of the children in the room stopped what they were doing and were whispering as they watched. Eliot shot a nervous look at Julia, but she shrugged just as confused as him. 

“Please, come into my office,” the man gestured down the hallway behind them. 

He didn’t wait for them to answer before walking ahead. Eliot turned to Julia.

“Are we following him or what?” Eliot asked.

“I don’t think we have a choice,” she replied.

She grabbed young Quentin’s hand, and the three of them made their way down the hallway to the open door on the right. Eliot glanced at the nameplate on the door and surprised ripped through him as he read the name. Hades. 

They filed into the office where he was waiting, not bothering to sit down at the desk in front of them.

“Considering you’re here, I’m sure you’ve figured out that Quentin is alive,” Hades surmised.

“Except he’s missing a piece,” Eliot gestured to the young boy. 

“Yes, indeed,” Hades said. “Unfortunately there are forces at play that I was not aware of when I offered him that choice. I’m afraid I made a mistake in sending him back.”

Eliot felt his jaw tighten. There was no way they had come this far for some god to decide Quentin didn’t get to live after all.

“We’re not leaving here without Q’s shade,” Eliot said.

Hades had the nerve to laugh.

“You humans are so funny,” he said, not really sounding cruel. Just amused. “You’d threaten a god to save the one you love. It’s endearing.”

Eliot bristled at his words, not breaking his stare. 

“Don’t worry, Eliot. It’s too late to fix my mistake now,” Hades said. “You have to take his shade and make this right. I don’t envy you, but I think you’re the only ones who can do it.”

“Make what right?” Julia asked.

“Fillory,” Hades answered. “Quentin wasn’t nearly as influential as he thought he was as The Dark King. Think of him as more of a symbolic monarch.” Hades looked down for a moment before snapping his fingers and saying, “Like the Queen of England! He was just a convenient coincidence with a claim to the throne.” 

“So who’s really running things then?” Eliot asked.

“Well, that is the million dollar question, isn’t it?” Hades said thoughtfully. “Whoever it is, they’ve got half the Library under their thumb, and they’ve got the gods talking too. That kind of shift in power doesn’t go unnoticed.”

Eliot shifted from side to side, increasingly aware of their limited time here.

“Not that I’m not enjoying this, but we do kind of need to get back to Earth before a dragon eats us,” he said. 

Hades pulled a small bottle out of his desk drawer attached to a golden chain. He flicked his wrist, and young Quentin disappeared. They looked up to see a red mist floating inside the bottle. He reached out his hand with the bottle towards Eliot. 

“Keep this safe until you can reunite them,” he said.

Eliot nodded solemnly. He slipped the chain over his head and tucked the bottle under his shirt so that it rested against his heart. 

“One more thing before you go,” Hades said.

He walked around the desk and stopped in front of Julia. He lifted his hand to her shoulder, and she gasped. Eliot impulsively reached towards her.

“What did you do to her?” he asked.

Julia took a step back, her mouth wide open as she looked up at Hades.

“You’re most likely going to need that,” Hades said. 

Eliot watched in awe as Julia’s eyes flashed bright gold and a glowing sheen of energy danced across her skin. 

“You made me a goddess again,” she said, her voice full of awe.

“What you do with your power afterwards is up to you,” he explained, “but you really should be getting back now.”

They blinked and suddenly they were standing outside the elevator. 

“Hey, you can’t do that!” the man who had greeted them earlier shouted angrily.

Eliot hurriedly pressed the elevator button, but he stopped to stare when the man advancing toward them froze mid-step. He looked behind him and saw Julia slowly lowering her hand. 

“Did you do that?” he asked.

She said, “I think so.”

The elevator door dinged open then, and they rushed inside. Julia pushed the up button, and the doors slid shut. Eliot walked backwards until his back was pressed against the white walls of the elevator and lifted his hand to feel the bottle tucked under his shirt. He had a feeling things were about to get a hell of a lot more complicated, but he only had one thought in his mind at the moment. They were going to get Quentin back.

After reuniting with their bodies and bidding the dragon, and Harold, farewell, they pretty much went straight to Brakebills. Dean Fogg didn’t look surprised in the slightest to see Penny, Julia, Margo, and Eliot storm into his office. 

“Well, that didn’t take you very long,” he said.

“We sort of have some connections, you could say,” Julia explained.

He didn’t press further. Eliot figured he probably didn’t want to know.

“Very well,” he said, “I’ll take you to him.”

The four of them followed the dean down the corridors towards the room where Quentin was being kept.

“How has he been?” Eliot asked.

Dean Fogg laughed.

“Oh, he’s been tons of fun,” he said. “I’d say he’s still pretty pissed at you in particular judging by the nonsense he starts shouting every time I open the door.”

Eliot swallowed around the lump in his throat and straightened his shoulders. He said, “Well, we’ll see how he feels after this.”

They reached the end of the hallway and found themselves at the locked door. Eliot turned around to face everyone. He tugged on the chain around this neck until he pulled out the little bottle. Quentin’s shade was still floating inside it, glowing red. 

“I think you all should stay back until this is done,” he said. “He’s probably going to be pretty overwhelmed.”

No one argued. They were mostly staring at the tiny bottle, in awe of the misty red glow. It wasn’t every day you got to see a detached shade after all.

Margo grabbed his hand though as he went to open the door.

“You’ve got this,” she instructed.

He nodded.

“I’ll let you all know when it’s safe to come in.”

He placed his hand on the knob and slowly pushed the door open, letting it fall closed behind him. Quentin glanced in his direction but otherwise didn’t acknowledge him.

“Hey Q,” Eliot said.

No response.

“You can be mad at me all you want,” Eliot continued, “but I think you’re going to want to hear why I’m back.”

Quentin turned to him then, giving him his full attention. Eliot could see the moment his eyes spotted the shade around his neck.

“No!” Quentin shouted. “No, no, no, no! You can’t do this to me.”

“It’s what you would want if you were yourself,” Eliot said, pleading with him to understand.

He lifted the chain from around his neck so that he could hold the bottle out in front of him. Quentin gulped as he stared at it. Eliot felt a twinge of sympathy for how utterly terrified Quentin looked. He was going to have to face the weight of everything that had happened once this part of him was restored, and Eliot almost understood why he would prefer not to.

“You know I don’t have a choice,” Eliot said gently.

Quentin met his eyes then, and he nodded. Eliot took that as the most consent he was going to get in this situation. He slowly unscrewed the lid, and the red mist floated out. He watched as it made its way towards Quentin as if it knew where it was supposed to go. Quentin squirmed against his constraints as it reached him. He tipped his head back in a silent scream, and the mist absorbed into his body like it was floating through him. When it had all disappeared, Quentin’s head dropped.

Eliot approached him slowly.

“Q?” he asked.

Quentin didn’t answer, but as Eliot got closer he could see the tears that were falling onto his cheeks.

“Oh, Quentin,” Eliot murmured. 

He hurried over to him then and began removing the ties that held him to the chair. When he was free, Eliot took a step back. Quentin took a deep breath in, and looked up at him.

“Eliot,” he said. 

The name sounded reverent as it left his mouth.

Before either of them knew what they were doing, Quentin flew out of the chair and Eliot was there to meet him as he crashed into his arms. Eliot wrapped his arms all the way around his back, probably hurting him with how tightly he was squeezing. He felt Quentin grip his hands into Eliot’s shirt as he buried his face in his neck. Eliot could feel his warm breath against his skin, and it was possibly the best thing he’d ever felt in his entire life. There were soft sobs coming from Quentin, and Eliot lifted a hand to the back of his neck and let him cry it out. 

It was a few moments before Quentin was able to pull himself together. When he did though, he didn’t go very far. He only took a step back and looked at Eliot’s face, his eyes so bright and full of wonder that Eliot could barely stand it.

“You’re okay,” Quentin said.

Eliot laughed, “Yeah, and so are you.”

Quentin nodded, looking around the room.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “about…”

He trailed off as if he didn’t really know what to be sorry for.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Eliot said. He lifted one of his hands to gently touch the side of Quentin’s face. “That wasn’t you.”

Quentin didn’t look like he fully believed him, but that was a problem for another day when their friends weren’t waiting impatiently right outside the door.

“I think there’s some people who would really like to see you now, if you’re up for it,” Eliot said.

Quentin said, “Yeah, okay.”

He followed behind Eliot as he opened the door. Four worried faces shot up, and Julia was the first to notice him.

“Q!” she shouted. 

She pushed past Eliot to smother him with a hug, and Eliot stepped to the side with a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth as he watched Quentin embrace her. It didn’t take long for Margo to jump in. She wrapped her arms around him, and Eliot would think she was crying if he didn’t know better.

“Don’t ever do that to me again, you dick!” she said.

She didn’t sound angry enough to be offensive, and Quentin only laughed in response. Eliot caught Quentin’s eye as the girls fussed over him, and he smiled, earning himself a small smile in return. There were plenty of other problems to be dealt with and more reunions to have, but they allowed themselves this one moment to hug and cry and laugh in a dark, musty old hallway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay all of you can stop yelling at me about how sad eliot is now!!! this chapter is on the longer side, but i figured everyone would prefer that over me waiting until the next chapter for them to reunite.


	6. Chapter 6

Penny traveled them back to Kady’s apartment, where they landed with Quentin’s hand securely wrapped in Eliot’s. He didn’t really want to let Quentin go, but he knew it was a selfish impulse. They had time now. Plus, Alice was staring at him like she was seeing a ghost. Quentin gave his hand a squeeze and looked up at him with a small smile before stepping away to meet everyone else. Fen gave him a quick, awkward hug, and Kady and Josh did the same. Eliot watched as Alice approached him. She looked scared to touch as she looked him up and down, like she might break him or something. Eliot knew the feeling. It still felt like they were in one of his grief fever dreams. Quentin placed his hand on her back and led her out onto the balcony, shutting the door behind them.

Eliot stared through the glass, unable to take his eyes off of Quentin as they talked. He felt like he might disappear into thin air if he looked away. He felt Margo come to stand next to him and exhaled as she wrapped her arms around his waist.

“I can’t believe it either,” she said.

Eliot tore his eyes away then to look at her, conveying everything he felt into one stare. He felt like he might burst if he tried to do anything else at the moment. 

Kady got everyone’s attention then and said, “We’re ordering pizza. Is that okay with everyone?”

Eliot turned him and Margo back towards the group, and they joined Fen and Josh on the sofa as everyone sorted out their pizza preferences. He couldn’t help but keep glancing at Quentin out of the corner of his eye. He didn’t exactly feel jealous watching him with Alice, but he felt something. It was only a few more minutes before he saw him wrap Alice in a hug and the two of them came back inside. The whole room fell silent again as they watched him come to stand at the corner of the loose circle they had gathered in.

“What? Do I have something on my face?” he joked. 

He was pulling at his clothes nervously, and Eliot felt a pang of affection for him.

“We’re just really happy you’re here,” Julia said, her voice thick with emotion as well.

She scooted over towards Penny and patted the spot next to her. Quentin smiled gratefully and went to sit beside her, not protesting when she looped her arm through his and pulled him close. Alice had gone upstairs, and Kady followed her. They spent a few minutes filling Quentin in on how things had gone for the past few weeks, or years, depending on who you asked and answering lots of questions. Eliot only half listened, preferring to watch Quentin as he took in all of the information. He had a feeling watching him living, breathing, and animated with their friends wasn’t going to get old any time soon. Quentin caught him staring a few times and had the nerve to stifle a laugh as Eliot clearly tried and failed to play it off as a casual glance around the room.

The conversation got put on hold when the doorbell rang, and Kady and Alice came back downstairs to go get the pizza. They had skirted around the topic of Quentin’s time in Fillory, but it had to come up eventually. There were only so many details of their sad lives since his death that anyone wanted to discuss. Everyone was quiet for awhile while they ate, but it was Quentin who finally spoke up.

“You guys can ask, you know. About Fillory,” he said.

Several people looked down or took another bite of pizza, not wanting to be the one to start that conversation. Margo, ever the brave one, dared though.

“Okay, I’ll bite. We know how you got there from your book, but that’s about it. How long were you there exactly?” she asked.

Quentin pressed his lips together, doing the mental math.

“Less than a year,” he said. “Maybe six or eight months?”

Alice said, “That adds up if time was passing at a regular pace for you like your book said.”

Fen jumped in then, “So it really was only about six months ago then since Josh and I were in the dungeons, but how could it have been 300 years for the rest of Fillory?”

Quentin winced and looked to her and Josh.

“Yeah, sorry about that,” he said apologetically. “But wait. What do you mean it’s been 300 years for the rest of Fillory?”

“We kind of wondered what you knew about that,” Eliot said. Quentin looked at him, and they paused for the briefest moment before Eliot continued. “According to Tick, it’s been ten years, give or take, since Margo was banished, but Fillory itself is somehow 300 years in the future.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Quentin said. His eyebrows were turned down, and he had a cute little wrinkle across his forehead that Eliot wanted to reach across the table and smooth. 

“Unless,” he continued, getting that nerdy I’ve Read Fillory and Further Fifty Times look, “someone set up a clock barrens or something inside the castle like Jane did. Margo. Do you remember that?”

“A place outside of time,” Margo said, remembering her discussion with Jane when she went to get the time key. “Shit, Q, you might be onto something.”

“Come to think of it, we did have those clock trees popping up in Fillory that no one could figure out how to get rid of,” Josh added.

“And isn’t the Library sort of the same way?” Quentin asked excitedly, turning towards Alice. She nodded.

“The Library is a place where time is stopped,” she confirmed. 

“That’s got to be connected,” Quentin said. “It was the Library that grabbed me on my way back from the Underworld.”

“Maybe,” Alice agreed. “I’ll have to see what Zelda knows about it.”

Eliot felt a warmth in his chest watching Quentin engaged and excited, already putting the pieces together to solve the mystery of his own abduction. It was so quintessentially Quentin. He’s back from the dead, well technically his shade is back from the dead, for like two hours and he’s already on their next quest. Julia seemed to be thinking along the same lines.

“Hey, uh, maybe we should table this until everyone has had some rest,” Julia suggested. “Regroup tomorrow? There’s nothing we can do about it tonight anyways.”

Eliot felt grateful to her. After everything they’d been through that day, more planning and scheming wasn’t exactly what he wanted to do, even if Quentin’s eagerness was extremely endearing. He felt more like he might full blown lose it if he had to start thinking about time mechanics right now. 

Julia wrapped her arm around Quentin and brought her hand up to ruffle his hair. He flinched away and gave her a look, which made her laugh.

“I’m fine, Jules,” he said stubbornly.

“I’m sure you are, but I think the rest of us are a little drained from saving your ass. Eliot and I only went to the Underworld today, you know,” she said, her voice teasing but firm.

“We could have been eaten by a dragon,” Eliot added, his tone faux serious.

“Okay, point taken,” Quentin laughed. “I owe you my life.”

“No,” Margo said. She crumpled up her napkin and tossed it at him. He shot her an insulted look. “You owe _me_ your life because it was Sorrow and Sorrow who got the cavalry down there in the first place.”

Eliot said, “Yeah, she’s not letting that one go, so you better get used to groveling.”

Someone broke out the wine at some point, and the rest of the evening passed in lighter conversation until the exhaustion truly started to set in for everyone. Sleep had been in short supply since the news of Quentin’s reappearance, and it was an understatement to say everyone had been on edge. Kady and Alice were the first to duck out. Eliot found it amusing that Kady was the one who spent the least time there out of all of them, considering it was her apartment they were crashing in, but she tended to go where Alice went these days. Eliot looked away as Quentin hugged the girls one last time on their way out. 

“You might want to get that green skin checked out,” Margo mumbled next to him.

He turned to give her a withering look and said, “I’m not jealous of Alice.”

“Sure,” she said. “That why you’ve been glaring at her every time she gets near Quentin?”

“I have not been glaring,” he said indignantly. He hadn’t been.

Margo laughed.

“Don’t get your panties in a wad,” she said. “I’m pretty sure Alice is spoken for, and Quentin has been making googly eyes at you all night. You two are disgusting.”

Eliot grinned a little at her at that, causing her to roll her eyes.

“Just take him upstairs and have some hot reunion sex already so we can get back to business,” she said.

“Margo!” Eliot hissed at her, but before he could chastise her, Quentin had shut the door behind the girls and came back to join the rest of them in the living room. Margo gave him a smug grin. 

It didn’t take long for Penny and Julia to excuse themselves and go upstairs hand in hand and for Fen to make her way to her own room. Josh and Quentin talked for awhile longer about Fillory while Eliot ignored the looks Margo was shooting him between their bickering about the ongoing sparkling water debate they’d been having since first year. Eliot held firmly to the belief that it was superior, but Margo had yet to come around to that notion. Finally, she stood up too and did an exaggerated stretch followed by a cleary fake yawn. Eliot rolled his eyes, bracing himself for what was sure to be an award-winning performance.

“Josh, I’m feeling awfully tired,” she said pointedly.

He looked confused for a moment before following Margo’s glance towards Eliot and then saying, “Ohhh yeah, me too. Totally beat. I might pass out if I stay here for one more second.”

“Well, it sounds like you better get to bed then,” Quentin said, clearly amused. 

“Yes, I definitely better do that,” Josh said. Margo rolled her eyes.

“Come on,” she said. 

She shot Eliot a pointed look as she took Josh’s hand and led him up the stairs. That left just Eliot and Quentin downstairs. Quentin laughed, and Eliot looked at him.

“That was about as subtle as a ton of bricks,” he said smirking.

“Yeah, well, that’s Margo,” Eliot agreed.

They smiled at each other across the room, neither of them speaking for what was probably a few seconds but felt like an eternity. Quentin cleared his throat.

“Actually, I am feeling a little tired,” he said.

Eliot felt his heart sink and tried not to be disappointed. If Quentin wanted to sleep, he could hardly blame him. He had been through a lot, and who knows how much he’d been taking care of himself without his shade.

“Want to go to my room and talk, maybe?” Quentin asked, interrupting Eliot’s mental litany of excuses.

Eliot smiled, feeling his worry that Quentin was trying to get away from him disappear. 

“I’d like that,” he said.

He turned off the lights behind them and double checked the wards before following Quentin up the stairs and down the hall. He gave his own room a cursory glance but viscerally did not want to stop there. It wasn’t exactly a place that held the best memories for him. When Quentin reached the door at the end of the hall and pushed it open, he froze. 

“Everything looks exactly the same,” he said, marveling at the clearly lived in space.

Eliot scratched along the underside of his jaw before dropping his hand. He said quietly, “We couldn’t really bring ourselves to clean it out yet.”

Quentin turned and gave him a grateful smile.

“Thank god for that,” he said. 

Eliot nodded and followed as Quentin turned on the bedside lamp and sat down on the side of his bed. He stood near the door, shifting from foot to foot as he let himself look around the room for the first time since everything happened. 

“You could come sit,” Quentin said, bringing his attention back.

Eliot shut the door and did as he said, climbing onto the bed next to Quentin. They settled themselves until they were sitting cross-legged facing each other in the center of the bed, their knees just barely touching. Quentin reached out and took Eliot’s hand in his, letting his fingertips rest on the inside of Eliot’s wrist. 

“Is this okay?” he asked.

He looked nervous, and Eliot could do nothing but squeeze his hand tighter and nod.

“Okay,” Quentin said.

He turned Eliot’s hand over and over in his while neither of them spoke. It was tense but not in a bad way. More like there was way too much to say and where do you even begin? Eliot figured he knew as good a place to start as any. Perhaps the time to be brave was now or never.

“So,” he said.

“I..,” Quentin started.

They both laughed then, and Eliot reached out to brush Quentin’s hair out of his eyes where it had fallen.

“You first,” Quentin said.

“Okay,” Eliot nodded. He took a deep breath. “When I was trapped in my mind, my happy place as I called it, I had to dig through my worst memories to take control of my body and let you know I was alive.”

Quentin asked, “You mean that day in the park, right?”

“Right,” Eliot said. He swallowed roughly and rubbed his thumb across the back of Quentin’s hand. “Well, my worst memory was actually about us.”

Quentin sighed, “Eliot, you don’t have to tell me.”

“No, no. I do,” Eliot reassured him. “Because my worst memory, my biggest regret… it was rejecting you, Q.”

Quentin’s eyes went wide as he stared into Eliot’s. Eliot rushed to continue, needing to get this out.

“What we had in Fillory was real, Q. It was so real. I mean, it still is, for me,” he admitted quietly. Quentin’s eyes were glassy, and he reached out his other hand to rest it on Eliot’s knee. 

“It scared the shit out of me, so I ran,” Eliot said. He squared his shoulders and looked Quentin in the eyes. “I’m done running though. I promised myself I would be braver if I ever got the chance, so here I am. Being brave. Because... I love you.”

“Eliot,” Quentin said.

The soft look on Quentin’s face made his heart soar. He watched as Quentin leaned forward just a bit. He let himself raise his unoccupied hand to rest it on the place where Quentin’s neck met his shoulder, curling his fingers around the back of his neck and into the soft locks of hair at the base of his head.

“I understand if you don’t want this anymore, Q, I really do,” he said, “but..”

He was cut off as Quentin surged forward and pressed his lips against his own. It only took him a shocked second to react and let himself melt into the kiss. He tightened his hand around Quentin’s neck to pull him in closer and sighed into his mouth as Quentin moved the hand on his knee to trail his fingers slowly up Eliot’s thigh. He nearly whimpered when Quentin pulled away a fraction of an inch. He opened his eyes and watched as a shy smile spread across Quentin’s face.

“I love you too,” Quentin said, breathless, “in case that wasn’t clear.”

“Yeah?” Eliot asked, a grin working its way onto his face.

Quentin rolled his eyes and gave him a fond look.

“Of course,” he said sincerely. “How could I not?”

Warmth flooded Eliot’s cheeks, and he felt like he was definitely smiling in an undignified way that would embarrass him if he thought too hard about it. He didn’t think about it though. Now wasn’t the time for self-deprecation and hiding behind carefully constructed walls of indifference. He was going to have to be open with Quentin if this was going to work. He’d learned that much from this experience at least.

“So, we’re doing this then?” he asked. 

“If you want to,” Quentin shrugged, the corners of his mouth turning up in a smirk.

Eliot leaned forward and pressed his lips against Quentin’s in answer. It was a shorter, less passionate kiss than the first one. It was a promise.

“I most definitely want to,” he whispered against Quentin’s lips. 

The joking mood dissolved as Quentin pushed back against Eliot’s lips and sighed. Eliot took the opportunity to deepen the kiss, gently pressing his tongue between Quentin’s parted lips. He felt Quentin drag his hands up from his thighs to his hips. He gripped Eliot’s shirt before moving it out of the way to press his hands against the warm skin underneath. 

Eliot went back easily as Quentin moved into his lap to straddle him and landed on his back against the bed, only breaking their kiss for a second. Quentin braced his other arm on the bed next to Eliot’s head and leaned down to chase his lips. 

Eliot moved his hands down to Quentin’s hips and squeezed lightly. Quentin was so real and _alive_ in his hands, and it felt so unbelievably good. He felt a little embarrassed to realize there were tears stinging his eyes. He squeezed his eyes shut and ignored them, not wanting to waste one second of Quentin’s body pressed against his own as their lips moved together. It was only when Quentin trailed his hand up Eliot’s stomach and over his scar that they both froze. He had long since healed enough that it no longer hurt to touch, but it was the physical reminder of all that had happened that gave them both pause.

Quentin leaned back so that he was sitting on Eliot’s thighs, and Eliot pressed his elbows into the mattress so he could sit up a bit.

“Can I look at it?” Quentin asked.

Eliot nodded. He barely breathed as Quentin lifted his shirt up and over his ribs until the gruesome scar was there on display. Eliot watched Quentin’s face carefully as he lifted his hand to hover just above his stomach.

“Does it hurt?” Quentin asked.

Eliot shook his head, so Quentin lowered his hand to trace along the scar lightly.

“It looks worse than it is,” Eliot said, trying to lighten the mood just a little bit.

Quentin gave him a soft smile for his efforts, but they both knew it had been bad. Eliot knew he had truly almost died on the operating table. He also knew Margo felt an insurmountable guilt about being the one to dig the axe into his stomach, but he didn’t hold any resentment towards her at all. It was what had to be done, and it had worked as a means to an end. Still, it hadn’t exactly been a minor injury.

Quentin sighed and lowered Eliot’s shirt. He leaned forward again to press a soft kiss to his lips before moving away to sit next to him instead of in his lap.

“Can we just…,” he trailed off, but Eliot smiled and nodded, knowing what he wanted. Fifty years of muscle memory did give him the advantage of knowing these little details.

He sat up and moved so that he could lay down and rest his head on one of the pillows at the top of the bed. He opened his arms and said, “Come here, Coldwater.”

Quentin smiled at him gratefully and curled himself into Eliot’s side, half on top of him. He wrapped himself around Eliot’s middle and rested his head on his chest, right over his heart. Eliot held onto him tightly. They stayed that way for awhile, just listening to each other breathe. It was a comfortable silence. He could feel the beat of Quentin’s heart through his chest where he was pressed against him, and nothing had ever felt so sweet as that steady reminder that Quentin was here with him.

“Could you stay here tonight?” Quentin asked. He sounded unsure if he should ask, and Eliot couldn’t have that at all.

He gently traced his fingers down Quentin’s back, coming to stop just above his waistline.

“Of course,” he said.

They stayed there for awhile longer before they both had to reluctantly get ready for bed. Eliot went to his room briefly to change into a pair of pajama pants and brush his teeth, not sparing much more than a glance at the state he’d left it in. He was pathetically anxious to get back to Quentin the whole five minutes it took.

When they met back in Quentin’s room, he climbed under the covers as Quentin turned out the light. It took about two seconds for him to move back across the bed and into Eliot’s space. Quentin was a cuddler, and Eliot was forever grateful for that fact. They settled themselves with Quentin’s head on Eliot’s chest and their legs tangled together under the sheets. Eliot lifted his head to press a kiss to Quentin’s forehead and relished in the little sigh he was rewarded with.

“I love you, Q,” he said quietly.

He felt a wave of butterflies in his stomach as the words left his lips. It wasn’t an admission made lightly, even if he already knew the feeling was mutual. Eliot wasn’t the boy who fell in love. Except maybe now, he could be.

“Love you too, El,” Quentin replied.


	7. Chapter 7

Waking up the next morning was a whole emotional journey for Eliot. The first thing he noticed was that he was not in his room, and the second was that he was not alone. Then it all came rushing back. Quentin was lying next to him scrolling through his phone, which he must have found and plugged in at some point after waking up. Eliot watched him quietly for just a moment, marveling in the way the sunlight filtering in through the curtains shined on his tan skin and brown hair. He couldn’t resist for very long though before he needed to reach out and touch, to reassure himself this was still real.

He reached out to trail his fingers along the smooth skin on Quentin’s forearm, and Quentin turned to face him with his soft sleepy smile. 

“Morning,” he said.

“Morning,” Eliot mumbled, his voice not quite at full capacity yet. 

Quentin locked his phone and sat it down on the nightstand. He laid back down so that he was face to face with Eliot and smiled at him lazily. Eliot could wake up every day like this for the rest of his life, he thought.

He asked, “Were you catching up on all the pop culture you missed? Because I heard the Games of Thrones finale was shit.”

Quentin snorted. He reached out a hand to lace it through one of Eliot’s, holding their hands up between them as they pushed against each other’s fingers absentmindedly.

“More like clearing the 500 notifications I had,” Quentin answered. His mouth turned down into a frown. He asked, “Did anyone tell my mom?”

Ah, that was a thing. Eliot hadn’t spoken to his family for so many years that he sometimes forgot about other people finding it important as a concept. He knew Quentin and his mom hadn’t been the closest, but finding out your only son had died right after losing your ex-husband probably was something that had registered as significant.

“Uh, I think Julia went to see her before the memorial we had,” Eliot answered. 

Quentin nodded. He stared down at the space between them for a moment before seeming to come to a decision.

“I need to go visit her,” he said. “This doesn’t feel like a phone call kind of situation.”

Eliot said, “Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.”

Quentin sighed and scooted over so that his knees were touching Eliot’s under the covers. Eliot let go of his hand so that he could wrap it around his waist and pull him even closer. He rubbed small circles against Quentin’s back with his index finger.

“It’s just a lot to deal with, you know?” Quentin asked. “I mean, I missed several months of my life in which everyone I know thought I was dead. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be doing right now.”

Eliot hummed thoughtfully.

“It is sort of an unprecedented situation,” he agreed. Then he asked, “What do you want to be doing right now?”

Quentin grinned and leaned forward to press a quick peck to Eliot’s lips.

“This,” he said.

Eliot smiled and leaned back in to give him a kiss of his own.

“I think that can be arranged,” he said, smiling against Quentin’s lips.

They traded lazy kisses until Eliot felt Quentin start to relax against him finally, the tension from thinking about all the time he’d missed melting away. When Quentin pulled back, his lips were tinged pink and just the slightest bit swollen. Eliot loved knowing he was the one to do that.

Quentin propped his head up with one elbow and looked down at him.

“Did you know that Alice and Kady are dating?” he asked, completely out of nowhere.

Eliot laughed in surprise.

“Is that really what’s on your mind right now? Because I can kiss you again,” Eliot said.

Quentin reached out to nudge at his side, laughing. 

“Shut up,” he said through a grin. “I was just thinking about yesterday, and I don’t know, it makes sense somehow. I’m just glad she’s happy, I guess.”

“Me too,” Eliot said. He meant it too. He and Alice may have never seen eye to eye on much of anything, but he couldn’t begrudge the fact that she’d had a rough go of it. All of them were just holding onto whatever happiness they’d managed to find, and he was glad she’d found some with Kady.

“And I’m glad we get to be happy too,” Quentin said, as if he was on the same wavelength as Eliot’s thoughts. “I know this isn’t going to be, like, exactly how it was in Fillory. Things are different. We have all our friends this time and everything with Fillory and the Library going on, but we just really work. You know?”

Eliot smiled. He said, “Yeah, we really do.”

They stayed in bed, curled up together, as long as they could before their stomachs started to grumble. Someone was making bacon downstairs, and the smell was unbearably tempting. Eliot practically forced them up, promising to make Quentin the best damn breakfast of his life if he came downstairs. 

“Fine,” Quentin grumbled. 

With a quick stop by his room to throw on a robe over his pajama pants, he made his way downstairs. It wasn’t his most dignified look, but he wasn’t really in the mood to get dressed before he’d had a solid two cups of coffee at least. 

Josh was just finishing up the bacon when he came down, and Eliot waved him out of the kitchen.

“Good morning to you too,” Josh grumbled.

Eliot said, “Sorry, Josh. I have important work to do here.”

Margo laughed from where she was sitting on the couch. She said, “Eliot’s doing his thing where he goes extremely over the top for whatever boy he’s trying to impress at the moment. It’s best not to interfere.”

Eliot grinned at her over the ingredients he was spreading across the countertop. “Shut up, Bambi,” he said fondly.

“What? It’s true,” she shrugged. “I hope someone’s warned Q what he’s in for.”

“I doubt he minds,” Julia said, shooting Eliot a quick smile over the top of the book she was reading.

“Warned me about what?” Quentin asked as he came down the stairs and into the living room. 

He walked over to the kitchen island, where Eliot paused to lean across it and give him a quick kiss.

“Nothing,” he said. “Just that Margo needs to mind her own business.”

Quentin laughed, “Well, I already knew that.”

“Hey!” Margo yelled. “Sorrow and Sorrow, remember? I practically own you.” 

Quentin lifted his hands in surrender. He said, “Okay, you win. That’s not going to work forever, though.”

Margo hummed as she took a bite of bacon. She said, “We’ll see.”

Quentin sat down sideways on a barstool so that he could still see Eliot and everyone sitting in the living room. Well, Margo, Josh, and Julia because they were the only ones there.

“So where is everyone?” he asked.

Josh said, “Penny left to go meet up with some hedges at that new safe house he was working on with Kady and Marina. Kady texted to say she and Alice were going to talk to Zelda about how the whole time stopping thing worked at the Library. I think Fen went into the city. She said something about a knife museum?”

Quentin frowned. He asked, “And you think her going alone was a good idea?”

Margo waved her hand dismissively. “I taught her how to use Uber and gave her a can of pepper spray. She’ll be fine,” she said. “Besides, she’s not on Earth very often, and she loves all that touristy crap.”

Eliot was admittedly ignoring their conversation for the most part. He was focused on the crepes he was making. It was a recipe he’d picked up from his and Margo’s many adventures in Europe via British pub portal back at Brakebills. He might not take the time to cook very often, but he was damn good at it when he wanted to be. He only looked up when Quentin held out a coffee cup in front of him.

“Mm, thanks,” he said gratefully.

He took a long sip and sat it down next to the stove. Quentin leaned against the counter next to him, facing away as he sipped his own coffee. They were quiet while Eliot cooked and Quentin watched his movements with interest. It was such a nice feeling, being able to just exist together. They had gotten that particular past time down to an art form during the mosaic timeline because while they could just as easily have three hour conversations without taking a breath, sometimes they just needed the quiet. Eliot finished the crepes with a flourish of cut strawberries and powdered sugar placed on top and placed the plates on the kitchen island behind them. 

“You’re really going to spoil me if you’re not careful,” Quentin warned.

Eliot grinned. He said, “That’s the plan, babe.”

Eliot thought about all the little things like this that they’d missed in Fillory as their forks scraped across the ceramic plates. And how much they’d almost missed forever in this lifetime. They’d had fifty years together that he wouldn’t change for anything, but there was so much they’d never gotten the chance to do, restricted to a medieval land decades in the past with their friends depending on them to kind of save the world. He wanted to give Quentin absolutely everything, and the fact that he’d been given that chance now was almost more than he could fathom.

“So, I have a question,” Quentin said, interrupting his musing, “and you can totally say no.”

“I doubt that,” Eliot said. There were few things in life he’d say no to this boy for, and he knew it all too well.

“Be serious, Eliot, please,” Quentin said.

Eliot sat down his fork and turned his body towards him. He said, “Okay, I’m being serious. What’s up?”

Quentin poked at what was left of his crepe for a moment, pushing the pieces around the plate. 

“This is really fucking good, by the way, El,” he said.

“Quentin,” Eliot said. “Spit it out.”

Quentin sighed and sat his fork down. He said, “Would you maybe want to come to my mom’s with me this afternoon? I know it’s probably not going to be a very fun social visit, but I’m not sure I want to go alone.”

Eliot didn’t answer for a moment long enough for Quentin to start talking again, quickly this time.

“I know there’s like a million things we could be doing here to help, and it’s okay if you’d rather stay with Margo, but I think this is something I need to do. I can ask Julia...”

“Q, stop,” Eliot said. Quentin got quiet and looked up at him through his eyelashes. He looked so vulnerable and uncertain it hurt Eliot’s heart.

“No one is asking you to jump right in the middle of the world-ending disaster of the week, okay?” he said. “You’re allowed all the time you need to heal from this. If you want to sit this whole Fillory thing out, I think everyone would understand. And yes, to answer your question, I’d love to go with you.”

Quentin exhaled and smiled, clearly relieved by Eliot’s answer.

“Thank you,” he said.

Eliot reached out and pushed Quentin’s hair back out of his face.

“I don’t want to sit the whole Fillory thing out either,” he added. “I just need a day or two I think.”

“Of course,” Eliot said. 

Quentin nodded and took another bite, washing it down with the remains of his coffee.

“You have to let me know if I ever get too, like, clingy,” he said. “It’s just. I never thought we’d have this, you know? I mean, I thought you were dead, Eliot. And I kind of was dead, I guess.”

Eliot hated that he knew why Quentin had that niggling insecurity about how Eliot would like to spend his time. He vowed to himself right then and there to make sure Quentin never had a reason to doubt how wanted he was again. He couldn’t help himself. He reached across the space between them and gathered Quentin in his arms, pressing his face against his shoulder so that he could kiss the top of his head.

“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not exactly trying to push you away, Q,” he said. “The new and shiny may wear off eventually, but the last thing I want from you right now is space, all things considered.”

Quentin nodded against Eliot’s chest. He said, “Okay.”

Eliot knew it likely wouldn’t be the last time they had that conversation, but it was a solid start. He took their plates once they’d finished eating and rinsed them off before sticking them in the dishwasher. It wasn’t quite full enough yet, so he’d leave the monumental task of pressing the start button for someone else. That was one benefit of living with so many revolving roommates.

They spent the morning watching Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix on one of ABC Family’s near constant Harry Potter marathons. There was definitely a certain irony to be found in a group of magicians watching a fictional movie about magic. They were millennials though after all. It was an inescapable truth that they all knew and loved Harry Potter.

Besides, it was nice to just sit and watch a normal movie and have a reasonably normal morning for once. Eliot couldn’t remember the last time any of them had just hung out without a purpose. It had to have been back at Brakebills. Fillory’s time nonsense notwithstanding, the urgency he’d felt for the last few weeks since he and Margo had landed 300 years in the future had melted away. The reason for all the panic was currently curled up against his side underneath a soft blanket. 

“Do you ever wish we had wands?” Quentin asked.

Eliot snorted. He said, “Not really, but you’ve definitely put some thought into how cool that would be, haven’t you?”

Julia gave Quentin a look from the other side of the sofa and they both grinned.

“We used to find sticks in the woods and pretend they were our wands when we were kids,” she said.

“Oh my god, I forgot about that,” Quentin laughed.

“Let me guess,” Eliot said, “Harry and Hermione?”

“Obviously,” Julia replied. 

Eliot tucked Quentin in closer to him as he sat up just a tad so he could see Julia better. In a very serious tone, he asked, “What Hogwarts houses do we think everyone is in?”

“Slytherin,” Margo said from the other sofa. “Same for you, El.”

Yeah, he’d known that much.

“Quentin is Gryffindor,” Julia said, and Eliot could definitely see that. She continued, “and I’m Ravenclaw.”

They all turned to Josh, who shrugged. 

“Hufflepuff all the way, baby,” he said. “I mean, their house is literally below the kitchen.”

There was no arguing with that assessment. Eliot leaned down so that he could whisper into Quentin’s ear.

“I always shipped Drarry, you know,” he said.

Quentin burst out laughing, making everyone give him a look. He turned to Eliot and asked, “Are you really insinuating that you’re Draco Malfoy in this scenario?”

Eliot shrugged, “I think I could pull off the blonde hair.”

“Please,” Quentin said, a laugh still on his lips, “do not dye your hair blonde.”

“Fine, crush my dreams then,” Eliot said.

Quentin shook his head endearingly and settled back into Eliot’s side. 

Before they knew it, the five of them had sat through the end of The Half-Blood Prince, and it was mid-afternoon. Quentin had fallen asleep about halfway through the second movie, and Eliot figured he deserved the nap. He woke up when the credits started to roll though, and Eliot decided they did not need to sit through Harry Potter and The Long-Ass Camping Trip unless they wanted to give up on the day altogether. So, he reluctantly went to get dressed in clothes he could be seen outside wearing while Quentin did the same.

Quentin was quiet as they passed each other in the bathroom getting ready. He was practically radiating anxiety. By the time they made it into the back of the taxi, Eliot knew he had to act fast or Quentin might just throw himself out of the car door before they got there. If Eliot was the only hope for a normal family reunion, they were definitely fucked. 

“I’ve never gone to New Jersey for a boy before,” he mused, glancing at Quentin for a reaction.

Quentin coughed out a short laugh. It was progress.

“Well, there’s a first time for everything,” he said dryly. 

Eliot scooted closer, and Quentin turned to him with an exasperated look.

“Look,” Eliot said, “I’m not the best with… family. I don’t exactly have the best track record with mine, but I’m Team Quentin here, okay? Whatever you need.”

Quentin gave him a small smile then. He said, “Thanks, El.”

Eliot nodded and Quentin continued.

“My mom isn’t the most maternal person,” he explained, his voice terse. “To her, I will always be the depressed, fuck up who can’t get his shit together.”

“Well, we both know that is not true,” Eliot said.

“Do we?” Quentin asked.

“Q, we do not have time for me to go into great detail about all of the ways in which you are the best person I know right now, but don’t test me because I will later,” Eliot warned. 

“Okay,” Quentin laughed. “My brain just gets loud sometimes, I guess.”

Eliot understood that. He didn’t have depression the way Quentin did, but he knew a thing or two about battling one’s own self-destructive demons. 

The taxi driver dropped them off in front of a very quaint, suburban looking house. It was the sort of neighborhood Eliot had very little context for. In the Midwest where he’d grown up, he’d lived in a ranch style house, surrounded by dozens of acres of farmland. His closest neighbors had been a good three miles down a dirt road. He had to take the tractor or the four-wheeler if he wanted to see another human, and neither of those options were his favorite. He used to wonder what it would be like to grow up in a place like this, surrounded by other people and perfectly manicured lawns. 

“Here goes nothing,” Quentin said, bracing himself as he took a step forward onto the path leading to the front door.

Eliot followed a careful distance behind him as he ascended the steps and rang the doorbell. Footsteps approached. He heard Quentin inhale and exhale deeply, but the door opened before he could say anything to reassure him.

An artsy looking woman with wavy brown hair and glasses appeared, and Eliot guessed this was her. She took a step back, her mouth falling open.

“I’ve finally lost it,” she murmured.

Quentin huffed out a laugh and said, “No, you haven’t, mom. It’s me. I’m alive.”

She didn’t say anything. She just kept staring, her body halfway out the door.

“Can we come in?” Quentin asked finally.

She nodded and stepped to the side, watching closely as he and Eliot walked past her into a well-decorated foyer. Slowly, she shut the door behind them and turned around. She studied Quentin for a moment before launching herself into his arms. He stumbled a bit before steadying them and wrapping his arms around her smaller frame. He glanced up at Eliot, and Eliot gave him a reassuring smile. 

She stepped out of his embrace after a moment and said, “Right, I should make some tea. Then we can talk about… this.” She turned to Eliot then and stuck out her hand. “I’m sorry, I’m being rude,” she said, “I’m Cindy.”

Eliot shook her hand grinned. He replied, “Eliot. It’s very nice to meet you, Cindy. You have a lovely home.”

He was definitely turning on his charm, and he hoped it was enough to bring some semblance of normalcy to the situation.

“Thank you,” she said, only half seeming like she was listening. She turned toward the kitchen, mumbling, “Tea, then.”

Quentin seemed frozen in place, so Eliot placed his hand on the small of his back and nudged him along to follow her. They entered the dining room and sat while Cindy busied herself making tea. In a few minutes, she came back with three mugs in hand and placed them in the center of the table. No one spoke for a minute, and Eliot guessed Quentin was leaving it to her to make the first move as he stared down into his milky tea. 

Finally, she asked, “How are you here?”

“I’m not sure you’d believe me if I told you,” he admitted.

She took a sip of her tea before setting it back down in front of her and folding her hands neatly on the table.

“Julia told me everything,” she said, “about magic being real and where you’ve really been these last few years. I thought she’d just gone mad with grief, but now… I might believe more than you think, Quentin.”

Eliot didn’t know Julia had spilled the beans when she’d told Quentin’s mom about him. He couldn’t really blame her though. It wasn’t exactly an easily explained situation. 

“In that case,” Quentin said, “I got sent back from the Underworld by Hades because I killed the monster who killed Persephone.”

He left out the shadeless Dark King escapades part of the story, and it was probably for the best. There was only so much the muggles needed to know. 

Cindy nodded carefully and then shook her head.

“This is insane,” she said, “but I suppose I don’t really have a choice but to believe you.” 

Quentin nodded. They sat in an uncomfortable silence for a moment. She reached out her hand to place it on his arm and smiled.

“However it happened, I’m really glad you’re alive, Q,” she said sincerely.

Quentin visibly relaxed and gave her a watery smile in return. 

“Me too,” he said.

After they got past the whole back from the dead thing, it turned out that Cindy had a lot of questions about magic and Brakebills. Quentin and Eliot answered with as much detail as they dared and even showed her a few simple spells. She watched in awe as he re-assembled a delicate ballerina figurine that she’d knocked off a table earlier in the week.

“You always knew,” she said reverently. “I never could get you and Julia to get your heads out of those Fillory books, and your father and I thought we’d go insane if we had to see another card trick,” she laughed, “but you never gave up on any of it. It was part of you.”

Quentin gave her a soft, genuine smile.

“I guess so,” he said.

She glanced at the clock. It was getting on in the evening.

“Would you guys like to stay for dinner?” she asked. “Molly should be home soon.”

“Uh, no thanks,” Quentin said. “We should get back to the city before it gets dark.”

She nodded and stood to follow them to the door. She and Quentin stopped before he walked through the doorway and hugged once more. Eliot saw her fighting back tears as she cupped his head gently against her shoulder. She pulled herself together though before stepping back and letting Quentin step out onto the porch.

Quentin walked towards the steps, and Cindy placed a hand on Eliot’s arm as he went to follow. He looked up and met her determined expression.

“Please take care of him,” she said. “I know he thinks I see him as a little kid, but he does need someone to look out for him. I worry about him all the time in the city by himself.”

Eliot nodded and smiled at her sincerely.

“I will,” he promised. “Your son is very special, Cindy.”

She smiled at him and nodded her head. 

“I’m glad he has someone like you, Eliot. Maybe he’ll bring you back around sometime, and we can get to know each other better.”

“I’d like that,” he agreed.

“Taxi’s here!” Quentin called from the edge of the driveway. 

Eliot smiled at Cindy again before making his way down the steps to crawl into the backseat of the taxi next to him. The door shut behind them, and they sped off through the neighborhood and back towards their friends and all of their pressing, world-ending problems. 

With Quentin holding his hand on the seat between them and the last rays of golden sunlight streaming through the window, it didn’t seem quite so daunting though.


	8. Chapter 8

Quentin was on his knees in front of him. His face was twisted in agony, and Eliot watched helplessly as his own hand reached towards him. His fingers moved in a quick steady pattern, causing Quentin to collapse in on himself. He looked up at Eliot, his eyes pleading.

“Please, El,” he gasped out. “I know you’re in there. Please, stop him.”

Eliot focused all of his energy into controlling his limbs, but he just couldn’t. He was moving forward now, taking slow deliberate steps toward Quentin, but his brain wasn’t the one directing his feet. His hand lifted of its own volition, and then suddenly he could feel it. He felt the way the air moved against his fingers as he sliced them sideways roughly. Quentin screamed. There was so much blood. 

He shouted and was surprised that the sound actually came out of his mouth. He fell to his knees next to Quentin and reached out, but Quentin flinched away. He looked into Eliot’s eyes for just a split second before falling over onto the grass, his body lifeless. 

“NO!” he screamed.

Then it was dark. He looked furiously around him through the pitch black until he realized he wasn’t on that grassy hillside in Greece anymore. He was sitting upright in a dark bedroom. 

“Hey, hey, Eliot, look at me,” someone was saying.

He followed the sound of the voice until his eyes landed on Quentin in bed next to him. His eyes had adjusted to the light enough to just barely make out his features. Quentin held his hands up and backed away just a few inches, giving him space. He shut his eyes and focused on his breathing. It was a nightmare. Just a nightmare. 

When he opened his eyes again, Quentin was still there next to him, watching him carefully. He slowly reached out a hand and brushed Eliot’s arm, and Eliot leaned into the touch. Quentin seemed to relax at that and scooted closer. 

“Do you want to lie back down?” he asked. 

Eliot nodded and followed Quentin’s lead until they were both horizontal again.

“Sorry,” he whispered.

Quentin frowned and reached out to brush back Eliot’s messy curls. 

“For what?” he asked.

“You shouldn’t have to deal with this,” Eliot said, gesturing towards himself. “You had to deal with that monster for months, and now you’re being woken up in the middle of the night when I could have…”

Quentin pulled Eliot into his arms until his head was resting on his chest. He trailed his fingers up and down Eliot’s back, and Eliot tried to copy his breathing until he felt his own heart rate slow down. Then the tears came. Quentin held him tightly until he’d cried himself out. He felt so stupid. Here he was crying over Quentin, who was right here underneath him with his heart beating steadily in his chest where Eliot could feel it through his shirt. 

“It’s okay, El,” Quentin whispered. “I’m here. I love you.”

Eliot knew he didn’t deserve this. Everything Quentin had been through was his fault, and it wasn’t fair that he was here comforting Eliot in the middle of the night when he had his own trauma to be dealing with. 

“I can hear you thinking,” Quentin said. “Want to talk about it?”

Some rational part of Eliot’s brain was whispering that he probably should. Whether he deserved it or not, Quentin was here and wanting to be with him. He couldn’t live with himself if he was the one to push him away again, and he’d heard somewhere that communication was healthy or something. 

“I killed you,” he said, “in my dream. It was the monster, but I could feel everything.”

“Oh, Eliot,” Quentin sighed. “You know nothing that monster did in your body was your fault, right? No one blames you.”

Logically, yeah, he knew that. He wasn’t even aware of anything happening outside his happy place all those months. It didn’t change that it had been his hands hurting and killing all those people though. 

“It’s okay if you don’t believe me,” Quentin continued quietly, “but it’s true.”

“Sometimes I just get these flashes,” Eliot tried to explain, “and I don’t know if they’re real or not. I don’t know what he did or who he hurt, but I know he did hurt and kill with my hands.”

“Yeah, he did,” Quentin agreed. “That wasn’t you though. You’re a good person, Eliot, and you didn’t deserve what happened to you.”

Didn’t he though? He had been the one to shoot the monster in Castle Blackspire. If he’d never done that, then the monster would have never escaped. If the monster had never escaped though, Quentin would still be trapped in there with it if he wasn’t dead by now. His life felt like a shitty choose your adventure game where all options led to horrific endings. _Except maybe this one_ , his brain gently reminded him. For now, he had Quentin and Margo and Fen and even Julia. He wasn’t possessed, and no one was actively trying to kill them for the moment. They were all alive in this ending, and that had to count for something.

“Do you still see him when you look at me? Be honest,” Eliot asked.

He had to know, whether he wanted to or not.

“I thought I would,” Quentin admitted, “but honestly, I don’t. You’re nothing like him. When I look at you, I only see the man I love.”

Eliot lifted his head to look at him, and Quentin was giving him a soft, kind smile. He managed a half smile in return and then lowered his head back onto Quentin’s chest.

He must have drifted back to sleep because before he knew it, he was waking up to a bright, but empty, room. He could hear voices drifting down the hallway, and he took a moment to check his phone before getting up to get dressed and join them. Quentin, Fen, and Julia were sitting at the bar in the kitchen with a deck of cards spread out across the countertop between them. Julia was the first to look up and notice him.

“Oh look, it’s sleeping beauty,” she said.

He gave her a sarcastic smile and continued on his direct path to the coffee pot. The game continued on behind them until Quentin suddenly yelled, making Eliot jump and nearly drop the bag of sugar in his hands.

“You’re cheating!” he squealed. 

“You can’t prove it though,” Julia said, and Eliot could hear the smug grin in her voice.

“New rule, no goddess powers allowed in poker,” Quentin pouted. 

Eliot laughed to himself as he turned around with his coffee cup to watch.

“You might as well ban all magic then,” he pointed out. “It’s hardly fair for poor Fen over there.”

“I agree,” Fen said, jutting her chin out proudly.

“Whose side are you on here?” Quentin asked him.

Eliot shrugged and brought his coffee with him as he settled on the barstool next to Fen. 

“I’m Switzerland,” he said, “unless you want to make this interesting and switch to strip poker. Then all bets are off.”

Julia snorted, “Not at one in the afternoon. Some of us have some dignity we’d like to hold on to.”

“That sounds like something boring people say,” Eliot mumbled as he took another sip of his coffee.

Julia raised an eyebrow at him, clearly meant to be a challenge. Quentin sighed and gathered up the now abandoned cards scattered on the counter. 

“No one is getting naked in our kitchen,” he said. He shook his head. “I can’t believe that’s a sentence I just said.”

Eliot flashed back to a day long ago, in a cottage of Fillory Past, when Quentin had had a very different opinion on the matter of nudity in kitchens. He raised his eyes to Quentin sitting diagonal to him, and Quentin was looking back with a knowing look. Eliot smirked at him, and Quentin narrowed his eyes. Eliot suppressed the laugh bubbling in his throat behind his coffee cup, and Quentin rolled his eyes. Oh yeah, he definitely remembered. 

“We should probably get back to researching anyway,” Julia said. “Kady and Alice got some leads from the Library but nothing to really explain what’s going on yet.”

Research had never been Eliot’s favorite task. He was capable of it, sure, but at what cost? Nothing about reading through pages and pages of useless information to look for the two or three sentences that were actually relevant was fun for him. He’d rather be out doing something instead. Quentin was pretty much the polar opposite though. He’d get lost for hours in a book if you let him. That’s why he wasn’t surprised at all to see him make his way over to a stack of books sitting on the coffee table and plop down on the sofa with the thickest one in hand. 

Eliot followed and lifted Quentin’s feet to sit down on the opposite end of the sofa, letting Quentin lower his legs back down so that they were resting in Eliot’s lap.

“What’s the lead, Sherlock?” he asked.

Ignoring his nickname, Quentin answered, “According to Zelda, the time stabilization has been in place as long as the Library has existed, and no one really knows how long that is. It’s just kind of always been there, in every timeline.”

Julia added, “Since it exists outside of time, it’s kind of hard to have a linear beginning and end.”

“So essentially, we’re back to knowing nothing,” Eliot surmised.

“Pretty much,” Julia agreed.

“Okay, who wants to talk about strip poker again?” Eliot asked. “My brain hurts.”

Quentin laughed and sat the open book down on his chest, looking at Eliot.

“You could make yourself useful and take these books back to the public library,” he said, motioning towards the stack on the coffee table with his foot. “We’ve already gone through those.”

“Oh!” Julia said, jumping up from the chair next them to grab a piece of paper, “I’ve got a few you could pick up too while you’re there.” 

He sighed. It was better than research, he supposed. He reached across Quentin’s feet to grab the paper from Julia. It was filled with handwritten book titles ranging from Egyptian and Catholic mythology to metaphysics. Quentin pulled his feet out of Eliot’s lap and bent his legs until he was folded up on the other half of the couch. 

“Fine, come on Fen,” he said.

“Why do I have to go?” she asked.

“You’re coming,” he said, “and grab those books.”

She heaved herself up and out of the chair and gathered the stack of books in her arms. Eliot pocketed his phone and Julia’s book list and library card. He walked around to the other end of the sofa and bent over to kiss the top of Quentin’s head.

Quentin smiled at him upside down and said, “Thanks.”

Eliot said, “You’re lucky you’re cute.”

He and Fen exited the apartment and took the elevator down to the monochrome, minimalist looking reception of the apartment building they were staying in. He wondered, not for the first time, what kind of weird setup this was. He had been made aware of the bizarre laundry list of rent requirements and that some sort of magical landlord owned the building, none of which provided any further context. Marina was the one to find it though, which should be explanation enough in itself. 

The library was only a couple of blocks away, and he had to admit the fresh air felt nice as he and Fen strolled through the fairly busy streets. New York had been Eliot’s dream once upon a time. He knew growing up that he’d never spend his life in Indiana, but it wasn’t until he got a scholarship to Columbia University that he ever imagined himself living here. Granted, his performing arts degree wasn’t exactly relevant to his current life’s trajectory, but it had been his ticket out. He still loved the ever-present hum of the city, even on quiet afternoons like these. It made him feel like he was a part of something just by being there.

“I love New York,” Fen said wistfully. She asked, “Have you ever thought about staying here again?” 

“Sometimes,” he said. “It’s definitely preferable to Fillory in terms of entertainment options and indoor plumbing.”

Fen laughed. “That’s fair. Fillory has come a long way under you and Margo though.”

“I don’t know why, but it’s sort of felt more like home than Earth has for the last couple of years,” he said.

Fen was quiet for a moment, then she asked, “And now?”

“I don’t know,” Eliot admitted quietly.

Fen bumped her shoulder against his arm, and he looked sideways at her sweet smile. She said, “It’s okay not to know. You’ll figure it out. Besides, I think Margo and I do a pretty decent job in Fillory if I do say so myself.”

Eliot grinned at her. He said, “That you do.”

“You’ll always have a home there, Eliot, after we get this whole time mess sorted out,” she said, “but if you need some time away, that’s okay too.”

“Thanks, Fen,” he said.

“And I guess you can bring Quentin too,” she said. 

“Oh thank god, I was so worried,” Eliot laughed. 

“I like him,” she said. “I can see what you see in him.”

Eliot smiled at her, grateful for the millionth time that the woman he’d been forced to marry had been Fen. He’d wondered, once upon a time, if he’d even like her. They’d had a rough patch with the pregnancy, sure, but she’d turned out to be one of the steadiest sources of strength and light in his life. She’d never once let herself be a victim of the forces that placed her in this whirlwind of a life she hadn’t chosen for herself. He wished he was more like her more times than he could count. He supposed someone had to be the one to bring the pessimistic flair for the dramatic to the group though, and he wore that role well. 

They reached the library and waited while the librarian at the desk scanned their books back in and looked over the new list.

“Your friends not find what they were looking for?” she asked kindly.

“It’s a big group research project,” Eliot said. 

“Yes, the girl who came in yesterday seemed pretty overwhelmed,” she said. “I remember my college days. What’s the project on?”

Eliot answered, “Uh, the manipulation of time?” He noticed her look of confusion and added, “It’s for a mythology class, but we’re covering all of our bases to be sure.”

“Well then, I might have a book you’d be interested in,” she said. 

She clicked away at her keyboard for a moment before turning the monitor towards them.

“Cronus, the Greek Titan God of Time,” she said. She turned to them with a bashful smile then. “I was obsessed with Greek mythology as a kid.”

Eliot raised an eyebrow in interest at the brightly colored book cover on the screen. It was far-fetched, sure, but it was getting kind of hard to differentiate between what was real and what was legend in this clusterfuck of a situation. He figured it was worth adding to the list of possibilities. 

“We’ll take it too,” he decided.

“Okay,” she smiled. “Wait just a moment, and I’ll be back with your books.”

Fen took a seat in one of the chairs by the wall, and he paced while the librarian gathered the list Julia requested. She only took a few minutes to come back and scan them on Julia’s library card.

“Good luck with your project!” she said brightly.

“Thanks,” Eliot said with a tight lipped smile.

He handed the books off to Fen as they passed through the sliding glass doors, minus the one about Cronus. Fen rolled her eyes at him and asked, “Really? Why can’t you carry them this time?”

“Because you’re doing such a great job, I’d hate to interfere,” he grinned at her.

She didn’t look happy about it, but she took the books anyway. Eliot flipped the book over in his hands and started skimming the summary on the back as they walked. It was all the normal pretentious nonsense mostly, but he came to a sudden halt when he reached the last paragraph. Fen bumped into him, nearly dropping the books in her hands.

“Some warning would have been nice!” she said, exasperated.

“Fen,” he said, ignoring her. “I think I found something.”

She adjusted the weight in her arms and leaned in to see what he was looking at. 

“What is it?” she asked.

Eliot read the line aloud that had caught his attention.

“Cronus, or the Greek Kronos, became the father of Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Poseidon, Zeus, and Hades,” he said, his voice getting louder as his excitement rose. “Fen. Hades! That’s who sent Quentin back!”

“Umber’s ass,” Fen said. 

“Yeah,” Eliot said, looking up at her. “We’ve got to tell Quentin and Julia. Let’s go.”

They practically ran the two blocks back to the apartment, to Fen’s displeasure, and Eliot was bouncing on the heels of his feet while the elevator climbed up to their floor. They burst through the front door to find Quentin and Julia pretty much exactly where they’d left them, covered in books.

Eliot strode over to them and dropped the book in Quentin’s lap as he sat down on the opposite end of the sofa. Quentin jumped in surprise, and he looked up. 

“What the hell, Eliot?” he asked.

“Read the last paragraph on the back,” Eliot said.

Quentin gave him a withering look before picking up the book and doing as he said. His mouth dropped open as he got to the part about Hades, and Eliot grinned proudly.

“Oh my god, El,” he said. “You’re a genius.” 

“I know,” he said, “but it’s nice of you to acknowledge it.”

“No,” Quentin said seriously, “this could be exactly what we’re looking for.”

He looked up at Eliot, and his eyes were full of wonder. He shot forward and gripped Eliot’s face in his hands, leaning in to press a chaste kiss to his lips. Eliot thought maybe research might not be so bad if it was rewarded like this. 

Quentin pulled away before he could get too carried away though and showed the book to Julia.

“Hades is the son of Kronos,” he said, “the Greek God of Time. If the myth is true, there’s no way this isn’t the missing piece.”

“Holy shit,” she said. “Good work, Eliot.”

“Thanks,” he beamed. “Now I’m going to order Chinese take out while you two nerds spend the rest of the night reading.”

Julia and Quentin practically locked themselves away in the kitchen for the rest of the night with books and notebooks spread across the island counter. Eliot did his part by supplying regular drinks. Fen had become fascinated by a Keeping Up With the Kardashians marathon, and Margo had been all too eager to join her in watching when she and Josh came back after dinner. Eliot reluctantly watched the reality show with them when he’d run out of ways to pester Julia and Quentin, adding his own commentary about it every few minutes. Three episodes later, when Quentin said he was getting tired, Eliot pounced and declared that it was definitely time for bed. 

“What? Are you not enjoying this, El?” Margo asked.

“I would rather have my eyes gouged out than hear the phrase ‘Kimye’ again,” he said in a monotone voice as he ushered Quentin towards the stairs, “but have fun!”

He and Quentin settled themselves in Quentin’s room again. It hadn’t been discussed, but it had become the place where they both slept by silent mutual agreement.

“Sorry I’ve been kind of busy today,” Quentin said as they settled in under the covers.

“It’s okay, duty calls,” Eliot said.

Quentin hummed and reached out to run his fingers through Eliot’s hair. It felt nice, and Eliot smiled at him lazily. 

“That book you brought back really helped,” Quentin said. “Jules is going to put out some feelers tomorrow so we can figure out what’s real and we probably need to talk to Alice, but a lot of things are starting to make sense.”

“That sounds promising,” Eliot said.

“Did you know Kronos was supposedly the King of Elysian Fields? As in, the Elysium where the shades are kept?” Quentin asked. He was beaming from ear to ear, 100% in his element as he spouted off the information they’d found.

Eliot found it super endearing when Quentin rambled on like this. He’d never admit to sometimes provoking him in the past just to get him to go on a tangent, but it had definitely always worked.

“That seems like a connection worth checking out,” Eliot agreed. “Lucky we have a little goddess on our team to fish for info.”

Quentin looked at him for a moment before dropping his hand from Eliot’s hair and reaching out for his hand instead.

He said, “I never got the chance to ask if you were okay, after last night.”

Eliot had been blocking the nightmare out of his head pretty much all day. His eyes traced Quentin’s concerned face as he thought about whether he was truly okay or not. Maybe not, but he was still functioning at least and that was something.

“It used to happen more,” he said, “when you were gone.”

“I’m sorry, El,” Quentin said. “That’s terrible.”

Eliot nodded. It was terrible, and there was no point in denying it. 

“I think this is going to take some time,” he admitted, “but you being here definitely helps.”

“Good, because I’m not going anywhere,” Quentin promised. 

Eliot lifted Quentin’s hand to his lips, and gently kissed the back of it. 

He said, “Me neither. You’re stuck with me now, Coldwater.”

Quentin grinned and leaned in to kiss him.

“Poor me,” he mumbled against Eliot’s lips.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so hi yes i'm still here lol some life things happened then i procrastinated by writing several oneshots but i've pushed through the writers block and we're moving again on tdk!

Eliot was worried about Quentin. It had been two days since their little research breakthrough, and they had mostly been filled with, unsurprisingly, more research. Group meetings, library runs, and a lowkey constant bickering amongst the crew had Eliot bored and antsy. He wasn’t alone by a long shot either. Margo’s patience with being stuck on Earth was threadbare, and everyone’s else’s patience with her constantly vocalizing that thought was getting to that point too. Quentin, though. He was _obsessed_.

Quentin was the kind of person who thrived when he had a quest, a purpose. He could compartmentalize and channel his energy into a project better than anyone Eliot had ever seen. This wasn’t exactly that though. This was Quentin staying up reading until Eliot had to practically carry him to bed. Him getting up the next morning at the crack of dawn and Eliot finding him downstairs on his second cup of coffee and his nose in a book. Him forgetting to eat until Eliot or Julia forced the issue. Him not speaking unless spoken to. Him not leaving the apartment. This was him not coping. 

Eliot could tell Julia was worried too. He’d caught her just watching him once while they worked, biting her lip between her teeth, before sighing and turning back to her notes. He felt a little lost on what to do. It wasn’t like Quentin was avoiding him or acting like anything was necessarily wrong. In fact, he was being very sweet and had apologized more than once for not paying enough attention to Eliot, as if that was the issue. Of course Eliot loved having his undivided attention, but he wanted him healthy more than anything and this just wasn’t it.

On the third day, he made an executive decision. They were getting out of the apartment, so help him. Alice had passed a message along through Kady that she and Zelda had finally found someone in the Library she suspected to be involved in the Fillory mess, and they were going to be questioning him. Margo volunteered to go along because she was bored out of her mind, and Kady had reluctantly agreed. As they were milling around the apartment and getting ready to leave, Eliot took his chance to pry Quentin away for a bit too.

He slid into the chair next to him at the kitchen table. Quentin didn’t look up until Eliot reached out to brush back the hair that had fallen over his face, but he offered up a gentle little smile then.

“How goes the research?” Eliot asked.

Quentin sighed heavily. He looked so tired that Eliot just wanted to tuck him into bed. 

He said, “Not great. Everything I find just leads to another dead end, but like, there has to be something out there about this, right?” He ran his fingers through his hair and sat back. He continued, “We can’t be the first ones to need to stabilize time. How have the experts in horomancy not nailed down a solid theory yet?”

“Hm,” Eliot agreed, “considering how many worlds there seem to be, you’d think it would have come up by now.”

“And like,” Quentin carried on, “obviously Kronos didn’t need math or magic to screw it up, if he even did it, because he’s a god. What are we supposed to do with that though? He’s not likely to want to help us out.”

Eliot reached out to take one of Quentin’s hands in his. He rubbed his thumb across Quentin’s knuckles, and Quentin closed his eyes. 

Eliot said, “This isn’t all up to you, Q. You’re getting yourself really worked up about this.”

That, apparently, was the wrong thing to say.

“How are you not worked up about this?” Quentin demanded, seeming a lot more awake. “This is Fillory! It’s your home! If this is something the Library is involved in, then it could get a lot bigger than that too.”

“I get that,” Eliot reasoned, “but all I’m saying is the best magicians we know are all working on this. We’ll get to the bottom of it like we always do, but there’s no need for you to run yourself into the ground over it.”

“I’m not running myself into the ground,” Quentin snapped, sounding a lot like a grumpy child. 

Eliot held his hands up in surrender. He said, “I’m just worried about you, Q. I was going to ask if you wanted to take a break? We could get some coffee and some fresh air. Maybe be one of those gross couples holding hands in Central Park. Could be fun.”

Quentin scoffed at him and shook his head. He said, “No one is forcing you to stay here, Eliot. You can go for a walk if you want, but I’m a little busy.”

He looked back down at his book, staring at the words with way too much intention for it to not be pointed. Well, Eliot had dealt with a stubborn Quentin before. He knew his patterns. Get frustrated, lash out, ignore Eliot. He had a whole lifetime of memorizing those patterns, in fact.

“So, what if I let you ramble at me about all of your theories while we walk?” Eliot tried again. “Sometimes that helped with the mosaic.”

Quentin slammed his hand down on the table, making Eliot jump. This wasn’t one of those patterns. This was a whole other beast, Eliot realized, and he was out of his depth with how at the end of his rope Quentin seemed to be. 

“You aren’t listening to me!” Quentin yelled. “I don’t want to take a break or get fresh air or whatever. I just need everyone to leave me alone so I can work on this!”

Eliot subconsciously raised his voice as he shot back, “I’m just trying to help, Q! Excuse me for caring about your well-being.”

“Don’t be like that, Eliot,” Quentin said. 

“What? Don’t be worried about my boyfriend?” Eliot challenged.

Quentin stood up and started gathering his books. He pushed his chair in roughly, scraping it across the tile floor. 

“I can’t do this right now,” he said, looking at Eliot. “So maybe you should go with Margo and Kady if you want to get out so badly, and I’ll be upstairs working when you get back.”

Quentin turned around without waiting for Eliot’s response and started heading for the stairs. Eliot sighed. He followed him out and said, “Q, wait!”

Julia stopped him with a solid hand on his chest, and he stayed there as Quentin stomped up the stairs. He looked down at her and saw his own irritability reflected in her eyes.

“Go to the Library, Eliot,” she said. “I’ll talk to him.”

“But, Jules--” he tried.

“Go,” she said. “You can’t reason with him when he gets like this. It’s only going to get worse.”

“And what are you going to do then?” he asked.

She set her mouth in a hard line as she looked at him. Eliot hadn’t seen her look so determined since she’d talked him down that day at Brakebills after shadeless Quentin had gotten to him. There was a certain measure of authority radiating off of her, and he was reminded that she was a goddess again and not just their friend Julia.

“I’m going to do what I should have done when he was so focused on saving you,” she said.

And, oh. That just made it all click into place.

He nodded at her and took a step back. Margo and Kady came back downstairs then, and Margo eyed Eliot suspiciously.

“What crawled up Q’s ass and died?” Margo asked. 

Eliot took a deep breath, placing a hand on Julia’s shoulder as he stepped around her and walked towards them. 

“I’ll tell you all about it on the way to the Library,” he said.

Kady raised an eyebrow at him in an appraising look and asked, “You’re coming too?”

“Yep,” he said, leaving no room for argument.

“Okay, great,” Margo said. She looped her arm through his and smiled up at him. She said, “The dream team’s back together.”

He returned her smile with the most enthusiasm he could muster. 

Kady just sighed and said, “Whatever. Let’s go, then.”

Eliot looked over his shoulder to thank Julia, but she was already gone. He sent her a silent good luck. She was going to need it more than they were.

There were apparently Library portals spread out across the city, if one knew where to look for them and the right enchantments to make them work. Eliot felt the tension from the fight draining from his shoulders as Kady led them to an alley a few blocks away and did some sort of visibility spell that revealed a door on the side of a brick wall. She opened it and didn’t wait for Eliot and Margo to follow her before stepping through. When they emerged, they were right in the middle of a long row of shelves. Kady thankfully seemed to know where she was going though. She led them through several winding aisles until she stopped outside what looked like an office door. Eliot saw the nameplate read Alice Quinn. 

Kady pushed through the door without knocking, and Alice looked up from behind her desk to acknowledge them with a polite smile before turning back to the laptop she was typing away at. 

“Zelda is bringing him in from the Underworld Branch now,” she said distractedly, as if they’d already been having a conversation. She and Kady probably had, he realized, remembering Kady texting while they walked.

Having had his attention focused pretty much exclusively on Quentin for the past few days, Eliot realized he didn’t know very much about what he had just walked into. 

“So, what’s the aim here?” he asked.

“We’re just looking for information,” Alice answered. “From what we can tell, he’s more of a mole than anything. He’s got to know more about what’s going on than we do though.”

“It’s a start,” Kady agreed.

Eliot exchanged a look with Margo, who just shrugged. They were both just along for the ride on this quest, and it was pretty obvious. He had to admit it was a nice change of pace though, and he’d missed spending time with his Bambi. It was just an added bonus if this detour got them closer to fixing their kingdom.

“Time to go,” Alice said, and she snapped her laptop shut.

She rose from her chair, and everyone followed as she led the way out of the office. They turned the corner into an impossibly long hallway of closed doors, and Eliot wondered what could possibly be behind them all. Horrors upon horrors, he was sure.

Alice stopped outside the door that was apparently where they were meant to go and knocked. It was only a moment before Zelda appeared. Despite the fact that she’d just brought a suspected traitor up from the Underworld, she seemed relatively unfrazzled. She simply ushered them inside with her hands flitting at her sides in a way that would look unnatural for anyone else but somehow just looked normal for her. They stepped past her and into a room that bore a strange resemblance to a police interrogation room. 

“It’s nice to see you, Eliot, Margo,” Zelda said, turning to them. “However, you are not permitted to speak on behalf of the Library, so you will have to wait out here.”

Margo just waved her off in agreement as she plopped down onto the sofa against the wall, and Eliot nodded at her. Neither of them even knew where to begin here anyways, and Eliot wasn’t planning on getting banned from the Library a second time if he could help it. Zelda turned back to Alice and Kady then.

“Okay, then, I’ll just be in my office if you need anything,” she said, seeming a little nervous at leaving them alone now.

“Thanks, Zelda,” Alice nodded, giving her a reassuring smile.

Kady said, “Don’t worry. We’ll take real good care of him.”

Zelda gave her an exasperated look, which only made Kady grin back. 

“Very well,” Zelda said.

She shot Alice one last pointed look before exiting the room and shutting the door behind her. This left only the four of them, plus the man who was magically bound to a chair in the room in front of them. There was a one-way window, so they could see him looking around like he was getting bored sitting in there.

“Do I even want to know why the Library has a police interrogation room?” Eliot asked, raising an eyebrow at Alice.

She gave him a knowing grin back and said, “It’s the Library. You have no idea what kind of things they have down here.”

“Well, that’s comforting,” Eliot replied.

They all stared at the man inside the room for a moment. He looked like an ordinary office worker with his typical monochrome Library suit. You’d never suspect someone so average looking could be a part of any kind of plot. Finally, Kady cleared her throat.

“Alright, let’s get this over with,” she said.

Alice followed her lead as they unlocked the door and stepped inside the room. Eliot paced over to the sofa and flopped down next to Margo. He instinctively wrapped his arm around her and sank down into the cushions as she melted into his side. There was a certain comfort to their physical affection that was simply ingrained at this point. She took his hand in hers and began lacing their fingers together as they watched the girls start talking. They couldn’t hear anything, but they could get an idea of what was going on from this angle.

“I’ve missed this,” Margo said quietly.

Eliot tightened his grip around her and placed his chin on top of her head.

“Me too,” he said. “I’ve definitely been short on my Bambi time lately.”

“Maybe I’ll have to sit down with Q and work out a schedule,” she said, a hint of a smile in her voice. “He may be your boyfriend now, but he doesn’t get all of your time.”

Eliot said, “Hm, now I’m picturing the two of you fighting over me, and it’s kind of hot if I’m honest.”

Margo smacked his arm, and he laughed. At that moment, Kady picked up a metal chair and hurled it at the wall behind the Library employee. Alice rushed forward, pulling her back by her hand and dragging her off to the side of the room. The man looked effectively terrified, which made sense because he’d have to be a sociopath to not be scared of Kady.

“Jesus,” Margo said, snorting out a laugh.

Eliot said, “They really have that whole good cop/bad cop thing down.”

“Maybe we should keep her around in Fillory and let her rough up a few palace guards,” Margo mused. “We might actually get some shit done.”

“Maybe,” Eliot agreed.

Kady was leaning against the far wall with her arms crossed over her chest and watching while Alice took a careful seat in front of the now traumatized man. If she couldn’t get a confession out of him after that, Eliot didn’t think anyone could.

“So, you gonna tell me what happened this morning with Q?” Margo asked.

Eliot sighed. He had promised to tell her about it, and he hadn’t really stopped thinking about it since they’d left either.

“We got into a bit of an argument,” Eliot said.

Margo looked up at him with an amused expression. She asked, “Trouble in paradise already?”

“Not like that,” Eliot admonished her. He continued, “I’m just worried about him. He’s barely sleeping or eating, and he’s so obsessed with this whole Fillory thing.”

Margo’s face turned serious then as she twisted around in his arms to face him. She wore the same look he’d seen directed at himself during the worst of his benders back at Brakebills. It was her fiercely protective look reserved for the people she really loved.

“Okay, well we can’t let that continue,” she said.

“That’s what I was trying to do!” Eliot said. He sighed. “I just asked if he wanted to take a break and go for a walk, and he nearly bit my head off.”

“El,” Margo said, her voice careful, “I don’t know if you really understand what he was like when you were gone. It got pretty goddamn bad, and not one of us saw it because we were all so worried about you and the monsters and the Library. But Q, he was drowning.”

Eliot didn’t know what to say to that. He’d held a healthy amount of resentment somewhere deep in his chest toward his friends when he’d found out what happened. He just couldn’t imagine how that many people had stood by while Quentin got so bad that he chose to sacrifice himself rather than fight. He’d buried those feelings as soon as they got him back because there was no point in being angry anymore, but he felt them simmering then, just below the surface. Margo grabbed his face and turned it back to hers. There was a fierce determination in her eyes.

“Not this time,” she said. “I don’t care what it takes, but none of us are leaving him alone like that again.”

Eliot nodded, only able to wholeheartedly agree with her. He may not have been around the last time, but he was here now. Even if it made Quentin mad at him, he wasn’t going to give up on him. 

He said, “Anyway, Julia is talking to him now. With any luck, maybe she’ll put the fear of god into him. Or goddess, I should say.”

Margo snorted and said, “Well, let’s hope so. And El?”

He glanced down at her, and she continued, “Let me know if you ever need my help. With him, or you.”

He smiled at her and said, “Will do, Bambi.”

“I mean it,” she said. “I’m not losing either of my best friends again.”

The genuine vulnerable look in her eyes made him swallow around a lump in his throat before he could shakily nod his head and pull her close. The door swung open then, and Kady burst through, followed by Alice.

“You didn’t have to be quite so rough,” Alice said.

Kady just shrugged. She said, “Well, it worked, didn’t it?”

“Yes, but--,” Alice started to protest but was cut off.

“Save the flirting for the bedroom,” Margo said, a smug tone in her voice as she sat up. This earned her a glare from Alice and an amused look from Kady.

“What did you find out?” she continued.

“Not much,” Alice admitted, which wasn’t exactly what any of them wanted to hear. She said, “There’s definitely something big behind all of this and they’ve got some control over the Underworld Branch, but I’m not sure everyone knows what or who that is. Or maybe they do and they’re just not talking.”

“He just kept saying ‘glory to his rule’ over and over until I wanted to punch him in the face,” Kady agreed.

Ah, so that explained the chair. Eliot could sympathize as he remembered the way his blood had boiled listening to that guard in the Neitherlands.

“So, he’s sticking to the company line then,” Margo said.

Alice said, “Yeah, pretty much. He did say something about the magic Everett had been storing in Fillory, but I couldn’t get anything out of him that made sense.”

“Well, we’ll let him sit and think about it for awhile and try again later,” Kady shrugged.

With that, they filed out of the room and locked the door behind them. Eliot pondered a little about the ethics of essentially leaving this guy in solitary confinement, but then he remembered that he’d played a part in Quentin’s shade being ripped out and decided he wasn’t feeling very empathetic towards him after all.

They followed Alice back down the long hallway to her office. Kady plopped down in an armchair in front of her desk once they got there, clearly making herself at home. Eliot shifted from foot to foot at the doorway, feeling a little out of place. He was sort of itching to get back to Quentin and the mess he’d left behind, but at the same time he worried how Julia had fared and what he would have to come back to. When he looked up, Alice was staring at him.

“Eliot, could I talk to you for a minute?” she asked. “Alone?”

Margo gave Eliot a very clear side eye, which he tried not to meet.

“Sure,” he said, gesturing towards the door.

She paced past him, and he followed her out into the hallway. He leaned against the wall as she pulled the door closed behind him. Neither of them spoke for a minute. It felt a little like a game of chicken as he stared at the opposite wall and she looked down at her hands. 

“So, uh, how is he?” she asked, finally breaking the silence.

Eliot exhaled and leaned his head back against the wall. He ran through a million answers in his mind, not sure how much Quentin would really want her to know, before he settled on a version of the truth.

“He’s adjusting,” Eliot said, “but he’s doing as well as can be expected.”

Alice gave him a short little smile and nodded, looking back down at her hands. Eliot could see how hard this was for her to do, and he felt a little twinge of sympathy for her. He knew if he were the one in her shoes, he’d always care about Quentin for the rest of his life, whatever form that took. That kind of love didn’t just disappear. It was almost reluctantly that he said the next sentence.

“I’m sure he’d like to see you, if you wanted to visit,” Eliot suggested.

Alice gave him a slightly confused look at that before saying, “I’m not sure that would be for the best right now, but that’s kind of you to say, Eliot.”

He nodded at her. He wasn’t really sure it would be for the best either, but he couldn’t tell how much of that was just his own selfish desires. Oh well, he’d tried. 

“Well, I think Margo and I are going to head back to New York,” he said. “Seems like you and Kady have things under control here.”

“We’re trying,” Alice agreed.

She gave him a small smile, and he smiled back. It was a delicate alliance they’d formed. Not quite a friendship but maybe something more like a peace treaty. He doubted they’d ever have the kind of relationship he had with Julia now, but he’d take it over a blood feud. 

He went to open the door and fetch Margo when Alice said, “Wait.”

He turned around with his hand still on the doorknob to meet her eyes.

“Just, take care of him, Eliot,” she said. “Please.”

“Of course,” he promised her.

She seemed satisfied with his answer, so he turned back to open the door and poke his head inside the office. To his surprise, Margo and Kady were laughing about something. He didn’t know Kady laughed, if he was honest, or that they had anything to talk about. It was truly a new era for them all, he supposed. 

“You ready to go, Bambi?” he asked.

Margo rose from her seat to meet him, and Kady said, “I’ll take you back to the portal.”

She led them back through the winding bookshelves until they found themselves dropped off in the same alley they’d left earlier. The walk back was short, and they returned to what was an eerily quiet apartment. Eliot glanced up the stairs. Margo patted him on the arm.

“Good luck,” she said.

She wandered off to the kitchen, and he decided it was as good a time as any to go and find his grumpy boyfriend. He took the stairs slowly until he got to the hall and could see Quentin’s bedroom door. It was slightly ajar, and there was a warm light shining through the crack. His feet carried him closer, and he stopped just outside when he noticed he could hear Julia’s quiet laughter drifting into the hall. If she was laughing, that had to be a good sign. He hoped. He took another step forward and knocked gently.

The laughter from inside fell silent, and footsteps approached. The door opened to reveal Julia, and he could see Quentin sitting cross-legged on the bed behind her.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hi,” Eliot replied.

She glanced back over her shoulder at Quentin, and he gave her a nod. At that, she turned back to Eliot with a little smile.

“I’m going to make a grocery run,” she said. “Text me if you need anything, yeah?”

“Sure, thanks,” Eliot agreed. 

He stepped aside for her to pass through and felt a little more calm with the reassuring squeeze she gave his arm on the way out. That left him alone with Quentin. Eliot was admittedly not very good at the whole aftermath of an argument thing. He was more prone to run away from these situations, truth be told, and let the relationship take the hit. This was just another one of those times that called for bravery though. So, he looked up to meet Quentin’s waiting gaze.

“Uh, can I come in?” he asked.

Quentin nodded and closed the book in front of him, setting it aside to make space for Eliot. He leaned back against the headboard and pulled his knees up to his chest. Eliot slowly paced forward until he could sit sideways on the bed in front of him. They stared at each other for just a moment. Then Quentin reached out. Eliot sighed as he wrapped Quentin’s hand up in his own and smiled.

“I missed you today,” Quentin said.

Eliot grinned. He said, “I was only gone for like two hours max.”

Quentin just shrugged, unashamed. He said, “Still missed you.”

“I missed you too,” Eliot admitted.

Quentin smiled at him brightly then, and Eliot felt his heart skip a beat. He’d never get over seeing that look on Quentin’s face directed at him even if he had another fifty years to see it. It was something he’d do anything to keep seeing, he realized.

“So, I’m sorry about earlier,” Quentin said, turning more serious again.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Eliot said, reaching out to brush some of his hair aside.

Quentin gave him a sweet smile but said, “No, it’s really not. You were just trying to help, and I was…”

Eliot waited for him. Quentin was trying to talk through whatever was going on in his mind, and that didn’t come naturally for either of them. Eliot might be allergic to feelings, but Quentin had struggled a lot during their time at the mosaic to be able to tell Eliot about those dark troublesome thoughts.

“It’s just,” he continued, “when my mind gets like that, uh, depressed I guess, I can get a little defensive. Moody. I shouldn’t have taken that out on you though, and I’m sorry.”

“I forgive you,” Eliot said. He continued, “I’m not entirely unfamiliar with your grouchiness, remember?”

Quentin squeezed his hand and laughed. He said, “That’s fair. I guess fifty years was decent practice.”

Eliot ventured, “Do you want to talk about it?”

Quentin furrowed his brow, causing a little wrinkle to form on his forehead. He said, “Jules thinks I’m focusing on Fillory to avoid thinking about everything else. She thinks I should see someone again to work through everything that’s happened, like, a therapist.”

“And what do you think?” Eliot asked.

“I think she’s probably right, and I’ll look into it. After we finish dealing with this,” he said.

“That seems reasonable,” Eliot agreed, “but Q, you can’t let yourself get worse in the meantime.”

Quentin sighed. Eliot could just tell that he’d already had this conversation with Julia. Well, tough luck. He had both of them to deal with now, and god help him if Margo felt the need to get involved.

“I know,” Quentin admitted, “and I’m going to back off, just a bit. Maybe we can take that day off tomorrow like you mentioned?”

He gave him a tentative smile, and it warmed Eliot right down to his core. 

“I’d like that,” Eliot said. “Mandatory dates from now on as part of your recovery plan.”

They both laughed and Quentin said, “Now that sounds like a plan I could stick to.”

Eliot stared at him for a minute, just enjoying this easy, warm feeling. God, he’d never loved anyone like this before.

“I know I’m not the best at the whole feelings thing,” he said, “but I’m here for you, Q. So if things get bad again, you can talk to me or just tell me you need a distraction.”

“I know, and the same goes for you,” Quentin said. “We’re both pretty messed up, huh?”

“Yeah, we are,” Eliot agreed, his mouth quirking up in a grin despite himself. He said, “I think we’ll both have Julia and Margo to answer to if we don’t get our shit together though, so we’d better keep a united front.”

Quentin leaned forward, tilting his head up, and Eliot met him halfway to press their lips together in a gentle kiss.

“I think we’ll do just fine with that,” Quentin said.

Eliot hummed against his lips and allowed himself to stop thinking for the moment and just enjoy the way Quentin melted against him. Yeah, they’d be just fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! leave me a comment if you like and let me know what you thought!


	10. Chapter 10

Eliot braced himself, the edge of the kitchen counter digging into his palms, as he pressed Quentin against the cool marble. Cereal bowls and coffee cups were long forgotten as they pressed their lips together over and over again, punctuated by the little soft sighs Quentin was making that were absolutely driving him wild. Eliot shivered involuntarily as Quentin’s hands wandered across his back, trailing down to his hips. The little tease stopped there and dug his fingers into the soft flesh just underneath Eliot’s shirt. Just when he was thinking to complain about it, he gasped when Quentin used that new leverage to pull him closer until their bodies were flush against each other. A small smile appeared on his face, breaking their rhythm enough for Quentin to grin too, opening his eyes to meet Eliot’s for just a second. 

“Jesus, you two.”

Eliot’s smile went from soft to devious at the sound of Margo’s voice entering the room, and he caught Quentin’s eye long enough to know that he knew what Eliot was thinking. He lowered his hands to Quentin’s thighs and lifted him up to place him on the countertop before stepping forward between his legs to begin kissing him again. Quentin was laughing against his lips, but he faltered just a bit when Eliot placed his hands on top of his thighs and started moving them upwards torturously slowly. 

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you two fucked and made up,” Margo carried on, undeterred by their obvious dissent at her interruption, “but you’re going to have to play tonsil hockey later because we’ve got work to do.”

Eliot pressed his forehead against Quentin’s, eyes still closed, and dropped one more quick kiss to his lips before taking a step back to look at her finally. He kept his hands on Quentin’s thighs though, smugly noting how he was still looking very affected by their activities. 

“Not today, Bambi,” he said. “We’re calling in sick.”

She scoffed and placed her hand on her hip.

“You look pretty healthy to me,” she quipped.

Quentin cleared his throat above Eliot then before turning his head and lifting his elbow to his face to let out the most pathetically fake sneeze anyone had ever heard.

“Nope, I’m definitely sick,” he said.

Eliot grinned at him. God, that dorky smile really shouldn’t do it for him as much as it does.

Margo just rolled her eyes in response. She said, “Well, pussy up then, because Kady called and they’ve got the info we need out of that Library guy to move forward.”

The mood shifted then, and both of them reluctantly dropped the grins from their faces.

“What?” Eliot asked.

“Yep,” Margo replied, looking very satisfied to finally have their attention. “We’re going back to Fillory, bitches.”

Team Take Back Fillory ended up being Margo, Quentin, Eliot, Julia, Josh, and Fen. Penny was caught up in some kind of hedge drama, and Kady and Alice had their hands full at the Library now that they had someone talking on that side. 

“Okay, listen up, dumbasses, because I’m only going to go over this once,” Margo said.

She was pacing in front of the group assembled on the sofas like some kind of eccentric college professor or maybe more aptly, drill sergeant.

“The working theory is that the magic Everett was hoarding in Fillory was already doing some weird shit, and when he removed all of it, it did some even weirder shit,” she said.

“Hm, very eloquently put,” Eliot mused.

She shot a glare at him, and Quentin chuckled next to him. He shut up though when her icy gaze drifted over to him. She apparently had not forgiven them for their earlier antics. Julia stifled a grin behind her hand.

“Anyway, as I was saying, you could think of it like a tsunami. All that water was just sitting there wreaking havoc, but then bam! Gone,” she said, making Fen noticeably jump a bit as she raised voice. She continued, “Now, when Quentin pulled his little ill-advised stunt in the mirror world, all that ambient magic got released back into the world. Hence, the tsunami.”

“So, let me make sure I’m following here,” Julia started, and Eliot was eternally grateful because he was in fact not following. “Basically, Everett was fucking with Fillory’s equilibrium by keeping too much then too little magic there, and adding all that ambient magic back, what, short circuited the universe somehow and threw it 300 years into the future?”

“Like I said,” Margo nodded, “working theory, but yes.”

“Okay, but what about the castle?” Quentin asked. “How is it not 300 years in the future like the rest of Fillory?”

“That,” Margo said, pointing at Quentin for emphasis, “is where Everett’s Library groupies come in. I don’t know how the fuck they did it, but they somehow managed to freeze the inside of the castle in time. I guess they needed a home base that wasn’t spiralling into chaos like the rest of the planet. Then those opportunistic bitches nabbed you on your way out of the Underworld and made you their figurehead because what better way to control a clueless kingdom than with some dick calling himself the Dark King that no one thinks can die.”

“I think I should be offended,” Quentin muttered.

“You should be,” Margo agreed, “what kind of edgelord calls themselves the Dark King?”

There were a few murmured laughs among the group, and Quentin sputtered at her in response.

He said, “I didn’t have a soul! I think you can cut me some slack on that basis alone.”

Margo just shrugged at him and said, “Julia didn’t turn into an emo 13 year old when she lost her shade.”

“She has a point, Q,” Julia added.

Quentin gaped at them both, at a loss for words, and Eliot reached over to hug him against his side. He brought his hand up to press Quentin’s head against his shoulder and petted his hair gently.

“It’s okay, Q,” he said, “I’ll still love you if you decide you want to dye your hair black and start listening to Evanescence.”

Everyone laughed then, and Quentin shoved Eliot off of him with a reluctant smile forming on his face.

“You’re all assholes,” he said.

“Maybe,” Margo said, “but we’re assholes who are about to take back our kingdom.”

“So, what’s the plan exactly?” Fen asked. 

Margo folded her arms across her chest and smiled. She said, “We’re going to summon Kronos and make him fix this time mess, then we’re going to kick those Library fuckers out of our kingdom and let the desert have them.”

The plan didn’t exactly go over well amongst everyone. To be fair, summoning a god had never turned out well for pretty much any of them, and the gods didn’t have a history of being helpful. Julia was, understandably, the most opposed.

“You have no idea who or what’s gonna show up when you make a call like that,” she said. 

She had a point.

“We don’t even know if he’d want to help us anyway,” Quentin pointed out. “Like, why would he care about time in Fillory?”

Another point.

“Then we’ll make a deal,” Margo shrugged. “Everyone has a price.”

Eliot’s whole body tensed. He shot a glance in Fen’s direction and saw her face become unreadable. This was dangerous territory.

“Uh, no offense Bambi,” he said, “but the last deal you made didn’t go so well.”

A tense silence fell over the room as Margo looked to Fen then him. Eliot didn’t waver as Margo stared him down. Finally, her shoulders dropped and she deflated a bit. 

She said, “Look, I’m not saying it’s our most foolproof plan, but it’s the best one we’ve got.”

And well, he’d have to give her that. 

“Okay, so, how do we summon him then?” Eliot asked.

She looked at him gratefully before pulling a folded sheet of paper out of her back pocket. She flattened it out on the table.

“This is the spell Alice sent over,” she explained. “Alice and Kady are already bleeding the stone we’ll need to trap him if it comes down to that. We should be able to get everything else we need in Fillory.”

They all leaned in to look over the spell. It was heavy cooperative magic, but they would easily have enough people to do it. 

“I still don’t think it’s a good idea,” Julia said. They all turned to look at her as she worried her lip between her teeth. She continued, “but it’s worth a shot. At least we’re going in prepared.”

Everyone exhaled as they looked around the circle at each other. It was a half-cocked plan with a dozen ways it could go wrong at best, but wasn’t that right on par with their usual style? 

“Okay, so when do we leave?” Quentin asked, sounding resigned to the course.

Margo folded up the page with the spell on it again and stuffed it back into her pocket. She said, “Kady should be by in a couple of hours to drop off the stone’s blood, then Alice is going to make sure we can get through the Neitherlands since Penny cocked out on us.”

Eliot noticed Julia’s expression harden at that mention and wondered briefly what happened there. She quickly schooled it into something closer to indifference though, and Eliot made a mental note to pry later as the group dispersed. Julia and Quentin left to go work on more research, presumably, and Eliot didn’t really care to ask where Margo and Josh were going. That left just him and Fen seated in the living room on opposite sofas.

They were both silent for a moment. Eliot watched as Fen stared somewhere outside the apartment’s windows, seeming like her mind was in another world. She started when Eliot stood up to cross the distance and sit down beside her.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Uh, yeah,” she said, giving him a hurried smile. She said, “I was just thinking.”

Her eyes took on that faraway look again, and Eliot reached out and took her hand. She turned to face him again, and her eyes were misty over her fake smile.

“Me too,” he said softly.

She squeezed his hand once, so quickly he could have missed it, before folding her arms across her chest.

“I don’t think I’ll ever stop thinking about her,” she said quietly. “You know? Like who she would have grown up to be, if she might have had my hair or your eyes.” 

Eliot sighed as he leaned back against the sofa cushions. He’d never really talked about their daughter, with anyone. It was a wound somewhere deep inside him that he didn’t even know how to begin to heal. A part of him felt like she’d never existed to begin with. She’d just been this concept that he’d ignored until it went away. A problem for later that never came about. That wasn’t really it though. After raising Teddy, he understood that now. He’d been a father twice and lost both children, and that was something he still didn’t know how to reconcile. 

So instead of trying to use the words he didn’t have, he just wrapped his arms around Fen and held her tightly against him. She placed her arms around his waist and sighed as she buried her face in his shoulder. They stayed like that for a few moments until he leaned down to kiss the top of her head and she pulled out of his embrace.

“Thanks, Eliot,” she said, wiping at her eyes.

He smiled at her and said, “Anytime, wifey.”

They both laughed, and she patted his knee as she stood up.

“I’m going to go see if Julia and Quentin need any help,” she said.

He nodded and let himself fall back against the sofa again as she left. His last thought as his eyes slipped closed was that they all deserved one hell of a vacation if this all went according to plan.

His nap was short-lived though because after what felt like five minutes, Margo delicately woke him by smacking him upside the head and saying, “Time to go!”

He turned around to glare at her and found Quentin looking at him with half amusement and half sympathy. He huffed at them and asked, “Did you get whatever it was that Kady was bringing over?”

“Yep,” Margo said, holding up a clear container of dark liquid that was apparently meant to trap Kronos if necessary. 

Eliot hoped they wouldn’t need it because he could only imagine that ending badly for them. With the crew assembled though, they all made their way through the portal Eliot and Margo had used earlier to get through to the Library, where Alice was waiting on them.

She stood wringing her hands nervously in the corridor they were gathered in. 

“I don’t know how long I can keep the Neitherlands clear,” she said apologetically. “Zelda called an all staff meeting to stall them, so you’ve probably got about twenty minutes to get to the Fillory fountain before the guards go back out.”

Quentin cleared his throat from where he was standing next to Eliot at the edge of the group and said, “Thanks, Alice.”

She directed her attention to him and gave him a quick nervous smile and a nod. 

Margo stepped around to the front of the group then and said, “Okay, you heard her. Let’s go, no time to waste.”

Eliot turned to look at Quentin, who met his gaze with a shrug. Eliot reached blindly for his hand and laced their fingers together as Alice turned to lead the group to the Neitherlands portal. They took turns stepping through the otherwise nondescript doorway until it was just Eliot at the rear. He looked at Alice one last time.

“Remember what I said, Eliot,” she said forcefully.

He nodded at her and felt relieved to see her give him a grateful smile, and then he stepped through to the other side. 

The Neitherlands was eerily silent as Eliot stood up and brushed himself off to join the others. Fen was taking the lead with a knife in each hand, but true to Alice’s word, there weren’t any guards to be seen. Eliot was still quick to grab Quentin’s hand again as the group quietly made their way through the maze of fountains. Forgive him if he was feeling a little protective after the last time they’d been to Fillory. Each wary glance over his shoulder proved they were there alone though. 

When they reached the right fountain, they stopped short. Everyone kind of realized at the same time that they had no idea where they were going.

“We need to get far away from the castle because the guards were patrolling the grounds when we snuck out,” Josh said. 

Fen nodded fervently, making Eliot think they needed to be _very_ far away from the castle.

“What about the Outer Islands?” Margo asked.

“Nope,” Fen said, shaking her head. “That uprising wasn’t quite settled when we got overthrown. I can only imagine it’s worse now.”

They all looked around the fountain at each other, mostly at a loss. Although five of the six of them had been rulers of Fillory, the problem was that none of them had really done very much traveling outside of the castle, or her own neighborhood, in Fen’s case. Well, except for two of them, technically.

Eliot turned his head to where Quentin was standing to his left and inhaled sharply as he saw him looking back, the same realization displayed on his face.

“Uh, I might know a place,” Quentin said. Eliot nodded at him, and he turned to the others and continued, “It’s pretty remote, and there’s a good chance it’s been empty for a long time now.”

“Perfect,” Margo said. “Let’s go.” 

Quentin’s brow furrowed as he focused his attention on the fountain in front of them. Without looking back at Eliot, he dove straight in, the others following behind him.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a big one!! i'm anxious to hear what you all think about some of the choices made here so please let me know after you've read! <3

When they landed in the clearing in the middle of the forest, the wave of nostalgia could have knocked Eliot over. 

The cottage still stood right where they’d left it. The mosaic was empty, having been solved long ago, discarded tiles stacked alongside it. The wooden table and the bed they’d left in front of the house were still there, but it was only the frame left now, the wood rotted in places from years of exposure to the elements. He felt a pang in his chest when he spotted the red shutters they’d painted still hung on the windows, although the paint was mostly chipped away. He felt like something was clawing its way out of his chest and making it difficult for him to breathe.

“Is this…?” Julia asked.

“Uh huh,” Quentin nodded, sounding very much as overwhelmed as Eliot felt.

“The mosaic,” Fen breathed.

Eliot caught a look from Margo, and she looked a little softer around the edges than he’d seen her all day. He cleared his throat, working desperately to bring his focus back to the task at hand. He’d be useless if he spent too long staring at the remnants of their life, powerless to stop the memories that were already encroaching at the edges of his mind. 

“So, uh, we should start preparing the spell,” he said.

“Yeah,” Margo said, still watching him.

He avoided meeting her eyes as she started listing off the items they still needed to gather. They were fairly basic, which made Eliot wonder about the legitimacy of the spell if he was being honest, but who was he to question Alice Quinn? She had all the knowledge in the Library at her disposal, after all. Julia cast a locator spell and led the way into the forest to collect the various herbs they were lacking, followed by Josh and Fen. 

As Margo began placing stones in a circle like the page from Alice showed, Eliot glanced around until he found Quentin. He was standing at the entrance to the cottage, running his hand along the doorframe as if he thought it might disappear underneath his fingertips. Eliot crossed the clearing to come up behind him.

“Surreal, isn’t it?” he asked.

Quentin laughed quietly and said, “You could say that. I just, I always wondered if…”

“If it would still be the same or if it all would have disappeared like we were never here?” Eliot finished for him.

“Yeah, that,” Quentin agreed.

Eliot sighed, leaning his back against the wooden door to face him while he watched Margo work. Quietly, he said, “I thought about coming out here to check, afterwards. I couldn’t bring myself to do it though.”

He turned his head slightly to meet Quentin’s gaze, and he was taken aback by the emotion he saw there. It was probably the same look on his own face. Standing there with Quentin outside their cottage, he could almost expect Teddy to come running through the door if he closed his eyes. He could see Arielle following him around, trying to get him to put his shoes on. He could see their vegetable garden and their laundry hung out to dry and their tile designs sketched out on the table. So much for keeping the memories at bay.

“I know we need to help the others,” Quentin said, breaking his train of thought. He looked up at Eliot. “But there’s something I want to check first.”

Eliot nodded and stepped aside for Quentin to push on the jammed door until it flung open. He followed Quentin inside the cottage, looking around at the dusty surfaces. It was mostly empty, and he figured they had Teddy and the grandkids to thank for that. Quentin walked right to the hallway, stopping next to the doorframe by Teddy’s old room. He brought his hand up to swipe the dust away until they could see it. The little notches carved into the wood, showing Teddy’s height over the years. 

“He was real,” Quentin said, seemingly unable to tear his eyes away.

He ran his hand over the grooves in the wood and left it there to linger. Eliot brought his hand up to rest it on the back of Quentin’s neck and began to massage the tight muscles there. 

“Yeah, he was,” Eliot agreed.

Quentin sniffled a bit as he pulled his hand away. He said, “I mean, I knew, but.”

Eliot choked back the emotion threatening to spill over as he looked around the cottage. From their current position, he could see the corner of their room down the hall, Teddy’s room in front of them, and the old stove in the kitchen. He slid his hand down to grip Quentin’s shoulder and pull him along as he turned around.

“We should probably go and help Margo before she comes looking for us,” Eliot said, making his best attempt at a joke to break the heavy tension of the moment they’d found themselves in. It fell a little flat, but he’d tried.

“Yeah,” Quentin agreed, leaning into Eliot’s touch as they walked through the cottage and back outside.

Margo didn’t look at them as they approached, which Eliot was grateful for. She simply motioned toward the paper sitting on the old wooden table and said, “Grab some rocks and help me get this summoning circle right.”

The others had returned by the time they got everything set up that they could, and they carefully placed the ingredients in the small wooden bowls they’d gathered from the cottage. Eliot had tried not to let his gaze linger inside the cramped homey kitchen when he’d dug through the cabinets for them. If he did, he would have remembered trying to get Teddy to eat solid food for the first time at the wooden counter and the fit of laughter they’d all ended up in when he’d spit it all out on Eliot’s shirt. Figuring out how to brew coffee the old fashioned way in the early days and seeing the smile on Quentin’s face when he’d brought him a cup in bed. Making soup when Arielle had gotten sick because he hadn’t known how else to help and they’d just been so scared. No, he couldn’t remember all of that if he wanted to stay focused on the task at hand.

Julia and Quentin had apparently been practicing the spell while Eliot napped earlier, so he and Josh played catch up while they all went over it again. Summonings were tricky, and they didn’t exactly want to get it wrong the first time. His hands were still in midair when he stopped to look at the spell again, and he felt a warm hand close around his. He glanced up to see Quentin gently adjusting his fingers until they were closer to what was shown on the page.

“There,” he said, “you were off a little bit on your popper 49.”

Eliot’s eyes slipped over to his face, and he was filled with warmth as he watched Quentin smile at him before resuming his own practice. 

It was nearly dusk by the time they decided it was now or never. Fen, being the only non-magician of the group, was perched on the wooden table keeping watch on the surrounding woods as they formed a tight circle. The five of them linked their hands, with Quentin on his left and Margo on his right, and repeated the opening of the summoning in Greek then in Latin. Then the casting began.

Summoning was an odd ritual in that there was no real set time for it to be effective. Either the being you were trying to summon would show up or they wouldn’t. You could cast until you were blue in the face before you accepted that it wasn’t going to work, and there were no real guarantees. So, Eliot kept his attention on the center of the circle and focused on getting his tuts right instead of looking around to see how they were doing. Due to his laser focus, he didn’t know how long they were casting before he felt it. It started out as just a change in the air, like there was an electric current crackling through him. Then there was a rolling thunder, and he looked up to see the sky darkening above them. He directed his focus back to his tuts again, working furiously to keep his form amidst the wind that was quickly picking up. Then it happened.

Thunder exploded around them, like a bomb going off. None of them were able to stay upright as the shockwave rippled through them, coming from the inside of the circle. Eliot fumbled around when he came to, feeling only cool grass underneath his fingertips. He opened his eyes and blinked when he was met with a thick smoke. His lungs immediately protested, and he began to cough as he waved away the fumes.

“What,” he asked, coughing around the word, “what happened?”

As the smoke cleared, he felt a palpable relief at seeing Margo also on the ground to his right. Josh was visible across from him, staring open-mouthed at the inside of the empty circle. His eyes finally landed on Quentin to his left, who was staring not at the center of the circle but at the empty space next to him.

“Guys,” Quentin asked, “Where’s Julia?”

All of them zoned in on the empty space then where Julia had once been. Eliot looked around the clearing, seeing no signs that she’d fucked off in the middle of the spell or anything of the sort. Fen was staring at them all with a stricken look on her face from where she’d been sitting. 

While they all remained shellshocked, Margo let herself fall back flat on the grass and said, “Fuck.”

~

Julia wasn’t exactly sure what had happened. One minute she’d been standing between Quentin and Josh, doing the summoning spell, then the next everything had gone quiet. She opened her eyes to take in her surroundings only to find herself surrounded by… nothing. It was just black, from floor to ceiling, as far as she could see. 

“Hello?” she called.

The silence that answered was eerie. Her voice didn’t echo or seem to bounce off of anything. It was like it just disappeared. Without really knowing what else to do, she began to walk. She looked down, feeling a little disoriented by the fact that she wasn’t seeing the solid surface her feet were apparently touching. She walked and walked through so much nothing until she began to wonder if she was hallucinating because she could have sworn she could see something, there in the distance. It was sort of the way one saw a mirage on the highway against the summer heat, so she wasn’t certain it was even real. Then she heard a voice.

“I knew you’d find me, Julia.”

Her blood ran cold. She didn’t recognize the voice, but whoever it was clearly knew her. She considered turning around, but when she glanced behind her, she could only see the blackness stretching out into nothing. She had nowhere to go but forward towards the voice that had called her, so she pushed her shoulders back and kept walking. The image began to take shape as she approached, and she could see that it looked like a jail cell of sorts. There was a middle-aged man inside it, standing with his arms folded as he watched her. She stopped a few feet away and crossed her arms over her chest.

“Okay, you got me here,” she said, trying to instill a confidence in her voice that she wasn’t feeling. She asked, “Now who are you and what do you want?”

The man chuckled at her instead of answering, and the sound immediately prickled under her skin. He looked down at his feet for a moment then back up at her.

“Aren’t you the slightest bit curious about where we are?” he asked.

She was curious, but she wasn’t in the mood for games. She stared at him, waiting for him to continue.

“Not everyone gets to go bowling or skiing in the afterlife,” he said as he began to pace the length of his cell. “Some of us are ruled too dangerous for such frivolity. When people like me die, we have to be... contained.”

Her eyebrow quirked as she looked him over, trying to place him. She couldn’t do it for the life of her though. 

“So what did you do to get put on the bad list?” she asked.

“How much time do you have?” the man answered. He grinned at her before stopping his pacing to meet her eyes. He continued, “I’m sure your friend Quentin could give you a few ideas though. Or maybe Alice, or Kady.”

Julia’s mouth dropped open just the slightest, and she almost laughed as it hit her. Of course.

“Everett,” she said.

“Bingo,” he confirmed.

She looked around the empty darkness surrounding the cell he was sitting inside. She’d never really taken the time to consider what had happened to him after he and Quentin had gotten consumed by the spell in the mirror world. None of them had. They were just gone. But if Quentin had been sent to the Underworld, then logically it only followed that Everett would have been too. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of it before.

“So you’re, what, trying to get revenge on the Library for them locking you up down here?” she asked.

“Not exactly,” he said. “Think a little bigger, Julia.”

She thought about the rogue Library guards, the hold they were trying to keep on Fillory, which was on top of Castle Blackspire with the backdoor to magic. The fact that everyone kept saying ‘glory to his rule’. Holy shit.

“You’re trying to get control of magic again so you can break out of here and finish your plan to become a god,” she said.

“Ah,” he agreed, pointing at her as he nodded his head. “I knew you were the smart one of the bunch.”

She tightened her fists at her sides, feeling her magic coursing through her. It had been so much stronger since Hades had given her that piece of her goddesshood she’d been missing. She’d been doing little spells here and there since then and answering the odd prayer, trying to grow it back to what it once was. It was all trial and error though. She hadn’t been sure how successful she’d been, but she felt it in an overwhelming way in that moment as she channeled her rage into the rush of current flowing through her every vein.

“As I said, I knew you’d make it here eventually,” he mused. “Luckily for me, you made it easy to find you with that summoning. You should really be careful when you call. You never know who might be listening.”

Julia was getting really tired of that line if she was honest.

“I’m going to need someone with some serious juice to get me topside again, which is where you come in,” he said. “I don’t expect that you’ll want to help me, but, well, you won’t really have a choice.”

Footsteps began to sound from somewhere in the distance, and she whipped her head around to see Librarians crowding in from every corner of the darkness she could make out, all coming towards her. She didn’t really think about her next move, but when she lifted her hand in front of her, they all froze mid-step. Everett looked around, marvelling at the dozen or so people.

She lowered her hand slowly, leaving the Librarians frozen in place. She focused her gaze forward then and stalked towards the cell, like a predator towards its prey, until she came to stand right in front of the bars Everett was gripping, just inches from his face.

“Tell me again how you think I don’t have a choice,” she said.

He didn’t shrink back as she stared him down. Instead he smiled at her, looking way too condescending for her tastes. He was a foolish man. He may have dreamt of being a god but he had no idea what real power felt like. It was almost cute that he thought he had any leverage over her.

“You can keep fighting it, but I’m not going anywhere, Julia,” he said. “You can’t kill a dead man, and my people will keep coming.”

Julia tilted her head as she stared at him. She asked, “You think I can’t kill you?”

“Even goddesses have limits,” he said.

She laughed and turned to pace alongside his cell.

“Well, most goddesses do,” she allowed. She paused to look at him again. “But there is one person who has the power to kill you. Someone who can feel your slimy little soul inside that meat suit and crush it until there’s nothing left. No prisons, no afterlife, just gone.”

He finally looked a tiny fraction as nervous as he should as he took in what she was saying. He rubbed his hands against his grey suit and said, “Yes, well, Hades isn’t going to waste his time on someone like me.”

“No, he won’t,” she agreed, “he has better things to do. So it’s lucky then that it was his spark of magic that gave me back my powers, isn’t it?”

His eyes grew wide. He backed away from her until he hit the concrete wall of his cell. 

“You don’t have to do this, Julia,” he said, putting his hands up in a placating gesture, practically tripping over his words. “We can work something out, surely, something that’s mutually beneficial.”

“You should have thought about that before you came after my best friends,” she said.

She ignored his pleas and closed her eyes, focusing on the energy coming from inside of him. Her goddess power wasn’t exactly like normal magic. It didn’t rely on precise spells or circumstances. It was more about intention. She lifted her hands in front of her and imagined it. She imagined his life force disappearing into the darkness until there was nothing left. Then she pulled her hands back against her chest and pushed them outward, screaming as the force of the magic left her body. All she could see behind her eyes was a bright golden light, and then it was over.

When she opened her eyes again, the cell was empty. Everett was gone, no body left behind to suggest he’d ever been there to begin with. She glanced around and saw that the Librarians were still frozen in place, their eyes wide as they watched her. Other than them, only the darkness surrounded her. Inside though, she was a raging storm. The magic flowing through her felt almost feral. She felt like she could do _anything_. There was only one thing she needed to focus on doing in that moment though. 

She knew there wasn’t going to be a door out of this place she could just walk through, so she was going to have to find some other way to get back to her friends in Fillory. She closed her eyes, trying to focus in on Quentin. She could tell when she found him because she could feel the anxiety rolling off of him in waves. He was panicking. 

_How are we supposed to do anything about it trapped here?_

His voice echoed through her mind, strained as he yelled at someone. She focused in tighter until she could see him. He was pacing as Eliot watched from the corner of a dark, empty room. Margo was standing a few feet away, gesturing and yelling something back at him. Josh was slouched against a stone wall, his head in his hands, with Fen at his side. Shit. They were in the dungeons at the castle. 

She spared one last look at the frozen Librarians, feeling no sympathy, before closing her eyes and willing herself to travel to Castle Whitespire.


	12. Chapter 12

The summoning had decidedly not gone according to plan. It had in fact gone so far from according to plan that Julia was missing and the rest of them were now locked in a dark, cold Fillorian dungeon. So, just another average Tuesday really. 

If Eliot was feeling nihilistic about it all, Quentin and Margo were borderline apocalyptic.

Eliot had tucked himself into a corner of the cell while the two of them paced and bickered. He caught a sympathetic look from Fen, who seemed to be handling things about as well as him from where she was slumped against the wall a few feet away. 

“I just don’t get it,” Quentin huffed. “We did the summoning right, so he should have shown up.”

“Well, clearly we didn’t do it right,” Margo snarked, “or we wouldn’t have been grabbed by those Library dickholes instead.”

“And where’s Julia? None of it makes sense,” Quentin carried on with his own panicked monologue, ignoring Margo entirely.

“Julia’s an indestructible goddess!” Margo yelled. “Excuse me for being a little more worried about my castle right now!”

Quentin whipped around to face her then as he replied, “How are we supposed to do anything about it trapped in here, Margo?”

“Well, that’s an excellent fucking question, isn’t it, Quentin!” she shot back. 

Eliot pushed himself off the wall to take a few steps forward to where they were now standing. He placed a firm hand on Margo’s shoulder and looked at Quentin.

“I appreciate that we’re all stressed right now,” he started, “but perhaps--”

Margo shrugged off his hand and said, “Don’t patronize me, Eliot.”

He lifted his hands and took a step back as he glanced at her then back at Quentin, who was giving him a pointed look for even trying. Margo opened her mouth to start in again, but she was left gaping instead as Julia suddenly appeared outside the cell.

Well, she was technically Julia. She was also clearly something _more_ though. Her skin had a shimmering glow to it, and her eyes were bright and golden. The only other time Eliot had seen anything like it was when Hades had given her that spark of magic back in Elysium.

Quentin took a step towards her.

“Jules,” he stammered, “What? I mean, how?”

She smiled at him as her eyes faded back to their usual shade. It wasn’t condescending, like it would have been coming from anyone else, but there was certainly a knowingness hidden in it.

“I’ll explain everything,” she promised, “but if you all would stop arguing for five seconds, you might have noticed you weren’t the only prisoners being kept here.”

She looked pointedly to her left at something Eliot couldn’t see. He stepped forward to Quentin’s side so that he could strain to look around the bars of the cell. Still, all he could make out was the dark, musty old hallway.

“I don’t understand,” he said.

“Yeah, cut the cryptic bullshit,” Margo piped in from somewhere behind him.

Instead of answering, Julia began walking in the direction of her gaze. Margo sighed and stalked away, back towards where Josh and Fen were still standing. Eliot and Quentin leaned forward though, trying to follow Julia’s path.

“Fascinating,” she said, a sense of awe filling her voice. “I’d read the theories, but I wasn’t sure if it was true until now.”

A deep, booming voice answered her, “Guilty as charged, I’m afraid.”

Eliot and Quentin exchanged a surprised look before turning back to Julia.

“Hey, uh, Jules?” Quentin called, “Do you think you could let us out of here?”

She looked back to them quickly, as if she’d forgotten they were there.

“Right, shit, I’m sorry,” she said. 

She snapped her fingers, and the metal door was flung open. They all scrambled to rush through it as it clanged against the cell behind them. Quentin and Eliot arrived at her side first, having been standing at the door already. Eliot took in the scene before him, trying to catch up to Julia’s apparently obvious conclusions. 

The only problem was that there was nothing there at all other than a blank stone wall. At least until Julia waved her hand as if she was brushing away a cobweb, and then, oh. The illusion wards fell. The cell was exactly like the one they’d been tossed into, dark and damp and only providing the minimum necessities. Inside it was a man standing with his arms folded over his chest as he watched them. He seemed unaffected by the whole affair, even amused. He was almost definitely a god of some sort. He had that arrogant self-righteous air about him.

“This,” Julia said, a smile in her voice, “is Kronos, Greek God of Time.”

Eliot opened his mouth and then closed it again, feeling a lot like a fish, as he searched for words that kept dying in his throat. Finally, he asked, “What exactly is he doing here then?”

“I don’t understand,” Quentin followed, looking directly at Kronos. “The summoning definitely should have worked if you were in Fillory all along.”

“Maybe not,” Margo said.

She walked along the length of his cell as he watched with a smug look on his face.

“This cell is warded up the ass,” she explained.

Josh asked, “But enough to keep in a god?” 

“Would I still be here if it wasn’t?” Kronos asked dryly.

Fen stepped forward then to stand at Eliot’s other side as she examined the god.

“Why would the Library be keeping him here, though?” she asked.

“Because they need me,” Kronos answered.

“What he means,” Julia started, and they all looked to her, “is that wherever he goes, time stands still. Therefore, the Librarians needed him to stay here to keep the castle from being flung into the future with the rest of Fillory.”

Kronos gestured toward her with a nod, confirming her explanation.

“As the God of Time, it’s sort of my job to keep entire worlds from flinging themselves, as you say, into temporal chaos,” he explained. “That’s why I came to this little planet in the first place. It was spiralling out of control and had to be stopped before it destroyed the balance of every other world along with it.”

“Then the Library trapped you here,” Julia guessed.

“And you could let me out,” he said.

Julia agreed, “I could, yes.”

Margo strided forward again and said, “Hold up a minute.”

Julia held out her hand and continued, “If you’re willing to do us a favor as well.”

Margo gave Julia an approving look and stopped to stand next to her, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Yeah, what she said,” she asserted at the trapped god. 

Julia turned to her with a conspiratorial smile before they both turned back to Kronos.

“I’m listening,” he said.

Julia walked forward until she was standing right up against the bars of his cell.

“Reset Fillory to the correct time, before Everett’s magic destabilized it,” Julia said, “and then I’ll drop these pesky little wards.”

They all waited with bated breath as he considered her demands. Eliot could practically feel the tension in the air. This was really their one and only play, and they couldn’t afford to be wrong here. Without really even making the decision to do it, he reached out for Quentin’s hand. Quentin wordlessly accepted and laced their fingers together with a soft squeeze. 

Finally, Kronos said, “That’s a big ask from a little demigoddess.”

“Maybe so,” Julia shrugged, “but you’re not really in a position to negotiate, are you?”

Eliot watched him carefully as he thought it over. He clearly did not want to help them in any way, but then again, Julia was right. Eliot felt Quentin tighten his grip on his hand as they all watched Kronos’s face settle on resignation.

He closed his eyes for a moment, and all of them looked at each other with confused expressions. Then, after only a few seconds, he opened them again.

“It is done,” he said.

“How do we know you’re not lying to us?” Margo asked.

Eliot jumped as he heard a shuffling next to him from where Fen had been standing.

“Oh, Ember’s balls,” she exclaimed as she doubled over.

Josh was in a similar state a few feet away, holding his head with his eyes squeezed shut.

“He’s telling the truth,” Josh said through gritted teeth.

Eliot reached out his free hand to grab Fen’s arm and steady her. 

“What just happened?” he asked.

She looked up at him with a pained, confused expression. 

“I think I just got ten years younger,” she said.

Kronos cleared his throat.

“You’re about to have a flood of palace guards on your hands once they realize what you’ve done,” he said, “so I think it’s time to hold up your end of the bargain.”

Julia lifted her hand and began delicately strumming her fingers, as if she was picking through each ward one by one. When she was finished, the wards shone bright blue before dropping.

“There,” she said.

Kronos reached out his hand and smiled when it passed through the bars unhindered by magic.

“Thank you, Our Lady of the Tree,” he said. “Until next time.”

He was gone in a flash, leaving them all reeling in the corridor of the dark dungeons. Fen was still staggering next to him, so Eliot let go of Quentin’s hand to fully wrap her up in his arms. Margo had grabbed Josh too and was trying to hold him up on the other side of the hall. 

“So, what now?” Quentin asked.

As if in response to his question, a door at the end of the corridor flung open to reveal an out of breath Tick Pickwick behind it.

“Oh good, you’re all here,” he said, not seeming like he found it extremely good.

“What’s going on, Tick?” Margo asked.

“Well,” he said, straightening his shirt as he stepped fully through the door, “I regret to inform you that the people are, uh, rioting, you could say.”

“Of course they are,” Margo rolled her eyes.

“And our guests from the Library,” he continued, “are quite concerned about what just happened to Fillory. I’m hoping you all know something about that?”

“We do,” Fen said.

Eliot turned to watch as she straightened her shoulders and stepped out of his arms. She walked up to stand at Margo’s side.

She said, “Tick, tell the people that by order of High King Fen, an assembly will be held this afternoon in the courtyard.”

“Very well,” he said, nodding at her. Then he asked, “And what about our guests?”

“Don’t let them go anywhere,” Margo said. “We’ll take care of them.”

Fen grinned and held her hand up in front of Margo for a high five. Margo gave her an affectionate eye roll before smacking her palm with her own. 

The logistics of Fillory going forward was a complicated matter. Fen’s first order of business was to banish the Librarians who had taken up residence in the castle, followed by un-banishing Margo. The people of Fillory were understandably confused by their attempts at an explanation, which was probably going to take awhile to sort out, but frankly they’d never been cooperative in the first place, as Eliot pointed out. Fen and Josh retained their royal status for the sake of an easy transition, but Eliot and Margo were officially reinstated as part of the royal council. Quentin had insisted on staying out of it all. He was just about the only one who got away with it too. Julia, it turns out, was now regarded as even more of a local legend once news spread of the deal she struck with Kronos. Whether she wanted to be or not, it seemed she was unofficially Fillory’s new deity. 

It was a long day, all in all. After hours of grueling assemblies, meetings, and ceremonies, they were all exhausted. None of them felt quite up to interdimensional travel by the end of it, so they elected to stay in Fillory for the night to somewhat recover. That was how Eliot and Quentin found themselves tucked away in Eliot’s old rooms at the castle. They had been putting their leftover adrenaline to good use, or so Eliot had reasoned to Quentin. Not that he’d actually needed all that much convincing when Eliot had locked the door and backed him onto the bed.

Now though, they were truly exhausted and curled up together under the expensive dark red silk sheets. 

“We should steal these sheets when we go back to New York,” Quentin mumbled.

Eliot could only half understand him from where his face was pressed against his chest, but he laughed anyway as he brought his hand up to the back of Quentin’s head. He dug his fingers in his hair to lightly massage his scalp before trailing them down his back again. Quentin sighed as he came to a stop at his lower back and settled his hand there.

“We should,” Eliot agreed. “What’s the point of being an overthrown high king if you can’t steal the palace linens?”

“Exactly,” Quentin murmured. 

They were basically talking nonsense, which was sort of their thing after sex. There was a thread of importance in it though that Eliot couldn’t quite stop thinking about. So, he brought his hand up to trace Quentin’s spine again as he considered how exactly to go about it.

“So,” he said, “you do want to go back to New York, then?”

Quentin grumbled as he lifted himself enough so that he could rest his arms and chin against Eliot’s chest.

“I guess we’re talking about this now?” he asked.

His hair was adorably mussed up from Eliot’s fingers, and he had a sleepy, contented look on his face. It made Eliot’s heart ache to just wrap him up in his arms and never let him go again. He smiled at him sympathetically. 

“I think we probably should, don’t you?” he asked.

Quentin hummed and nodded his head. He stared into Eliot’s eyes for a moment as neither of them said anything. It wasn’t tense exactly, but there was a lot hanging in the silence.

“I don’t think I want to move to Fillory right now,” Quentin finally said.

Eliot had guessed as much, but it was another thing to hear it stated so matter of factly. He’d been thinking it over for awhile himself. Fillory was, in many ways, his home. As infuriating as it could be, it was the place that gave him a purpose. It was the place that had saved him once upon a time. It was also the place with his Bambi. All of those were things that helped him survive. He’d realized, though, that maybe he wanted to do more than just survive. He wanted to be happy too. In order to do that, well, there was really only one solution.

“Okay,” he said simply.

Quentin raised an eyebrow at him.

“Okay?” he asked. “That’s it?”

“That’s it,” Eliot shrugged. “I want to be wherever you are, and if that’s New York, then we’ll go to New York.”

Quentin chewed on his lip and looked down at Eliot’s chest as he digested the words. Eliot could practically hear the doubts in his head, so he reached a hand up to pet his hair as if he could smooth them away himself.

Quentin said, “That doesn’t seem fair to you. What about Margo? And Fen?”

“If you think being on another planet is going to keep either of them away, then you clearly haven’t met them,” Eliot pointed out, which earned him a smile from Quentin.

“I’m serious,” Quentin said. “I don’t want you to give up Fillory for me.”

“So, how about I don’t?” he asked. Quentin scrunched his brows together in confusion, so he continued, “We can make New York our home base, so to speak, for now and visit Fillory as often as we want. Or I can visit and you can stay. It’s not like we aren’t magicians who can travel between worlds.”

“That’s true,” Quentin conceded.

“And they can send us a bunny if we’re needed here,” Eliot added.

“Also true,” Quentin said.

Eliot dragged both of his hands up Quentin’s sides and brought them to rest gently at the nape of his neck, grinning as Quentin smiled at him warmly.

“So, that’s settled then,” Eliot said.

Quentin pushed himself up until he could reach Eliot’s lips and press a soft kiss to them.

“I love you,” he said.

Eliot smiled in the space between them and said, “Love you too, Q.”

Quentin kissed him again before pulling back just enough to say, “Also, we’re totally stealing the sheets.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Eliot agreed before leaning in to chase his lips again.

When they broke the news to Margo the next morning, she’d been decidedly disappointed but not surprised. 

“I don’t like this,” she pouted, crossing her arms over her chest.

Eliot wrapped her up in his arms, pouty face and all, and squeezed her against him.

“We’ll enchant a two way mirror first thing,” he promised, “then we can have nightly gossip sessions about whatever batshit nonsense is going on in Fillory.”

“You’d better visit too,” she said.

“Of course we will,” he agreed.

Then she pulled away from his grip to look around his shoulder at Quentin, who was staring out the windows of the throne room looking rather uncomfortable as he pretended (badly) to not be eavesdropping on the conversation.

“Hey, Q!” she called.

He jumped at attention, which made her quirk a small smile at him.

“Get over here and hug me before you steal Eliot and leave me here all alone,” she demanded.

He hesitated, clearly not sure if she was being serious, until Eliot reached out one arm towards him.

“Come on, group hug,” he said.

Quentin rolled his eyes then and huffed out a laugh as he crossed the room to step into their embrace. Eliot wrapped his arms around both of them and sighed as Quentin and Margo did the same. There, with the two most important people in his life in his arms, he felt more whole than he had arguably ever felt. 

When they broke apart, that wholeness didn’t disappear either. He looked around the room at Josh and Fen, sitting on their thrones, and Julia waiting for them to go back to Earth with her. This feeling, no matter how separated they were by time or space, was his home. So when he took Quentin’s hand and walked back over to Julia’s side, he knew he was making the right choice.

“Ready?” Julia asked.

He looked to Margo, and she nodded at him. He gave her a smile in return before turning to look at Fen and Josh as well. 

“High King Fen and Josh the Fresh Prince, long may you reign,” he said.

Fen beamed at him in response, and he grinned back as Quentin took Julia’s hand. Then he turned his gaze to the two of them, who seemed to be waiting for him.

“Let’s go home,” he said.

And so they did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god, we made it!! I just wanna say a special thank you to everyone who has been reading this story and commenting since I started it back in May. I've hit some bumps along the way, but writing this story has been a labor of love. Knowing other people love it too makes me indescribably happy. 
> 
> ALSO, yes there will be a sequel. The premise is basically just a slice of life style continuation of these characters in this universe. Unpacking trauma, delving into relationships, Fillory nonsense, etc. The Dark King had one goal and it was to offer up a version of season 5 that made sense and fixed the disaster the s4 finale left us with. The sequel won't have such a cohesive plot as far as my initial intentions go. It's just gonna unfold as it pleases and as I want to write more of this world. 
> 
> Anyway, thank you thank you thank you for reading and commenting and sharing this fic! I'm going to focus on my new wip, a concept unproven, and eventually this sequel going forward. <3

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on tumblr at folie-a-hayley! :)


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